*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

I just had to restart my VM and went ahead and applied Server 2008 SP2 to it.  When it rebooted I got this error:

\

VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (vcpu-1)
NOT_IMPLEMENTED d:/build/ob/bora-156735/bora/lib/disklib/sparse.c:6283
A log file is available in “D:\Virtual Machines\QLDevTools\vmware.log”.  A core file is available in “D:\Virtual Machines\QLDevTools\vmware-vmx-7004.dmp”.  Please request support and include the contents of the log file and core file. 
To collect data to submit to VMware support, select Help > About and click “Collect Support Data”. You can also run the “vm-support” script in the Workstation folder directly.
We will respond on the basis of your support entitlement.

If you are running Server 2008 in a VM and thinking about upgrading to SP2, you may want to wait.  If  find a fix I’ll let you know.

If I am sitting at my computer I have music playing.  I used to not be so bad about having to have music playing.   But lately I can’t stand the silence, I have to have some type of noise (I know many developers share the same sentiment).  Since I need music to work and my wife needs silence to work, I kept having to swap from speakers to headphones.  This was a problem, until Windows 7.

The standard household ritual goes something like this:

ME Singing: “…. you give love…. a BAD NAME…”

Wife:  “…stop singing I’m trying to work….”

ME:  “… ok, sorry, got carried away, really good song there”

Wife:  “…. and put your headphones on…”

ME:  “… yes dear…”

When running Vista this meant I had to stop whatever it was I was listening to right in the middle and shut the application down.  Then I had to switch my default sound device from speakers to headphones.  Thus whatever was playing (Zune, Pandora or whatever) I’d have to shut it down right in the middle of whatever it was I was listening to.  Then I’d press the Windows key on the keyboard and type “sound” as shown below to open the sound settings and move the default device to my headphones.  Then I’d restart the app and music would be playing on my headphones. 

This was painful. 

Windows 7 makes this story much easier and works the way I had originally thought it should.  In Windows 7 I press the Windows key on the keyboard and type “sound” as before in Vista.  First thing you’ll notice is the search screen looks completely different and provides more options because the search has gotten better.  The UI is now just about search as the other navigation options have been removed. 

There are three options listed in the control panel section and two of them take you to the exact same place, one is just more explicit (which is good).  When clicked the standard sound settings dialog opens up.

As you can see above I currently have the headphones set as the default device and you can also see music is currently playing.  Selecting the speaker option and clicking the button will immediately switch all the audio to the new output.

Finally this works as I would expect in real-time.  I can now switch from speakers to headphones within about 3 seconds now. 

But!  Sound in Windows 7 doesn’t stop there though.  There are other features in the sound subsystem of Windows 7 including the ability to handle communication devices.  For example, if Windows detects you received a telephone call via your PC (think Live Messenger, Skype, etc) there are several options that allow you to mute all other sounds on the computer or reduce the volume.  This is called “ducking”. 

If you want more detailed geeky information about sound in Windows 7 watch Larry Osterman’s video on Channel 9 which includes demos of stream switching and ducking.

There are very few pieces of software that I hate to install.  QuickTime from Apple is at the top of the list.  I can’t honestly think of a single good thing to say about QuickTime.  But no matter how much I dislike having yet another tray icon and getting annoyed by software updates I had to install QuickTime.  At least until Windows 7! 

The camera I purchased back last year only made movies in .MOV format and for me it was a major drawback of the camera.  So much so I rarely found myself using it and instead using my Canon camera which takes native .AVI movies. 

This morning I discovered my QuickTime worries were officially over since Windows 7 supports QuickTime movies natively with Windows Media Player.  The announcement to support .MOV files was buried deep within the Windows 7 blog entry back in February (I looked this up because I missed it myself). 

Improved playback support for video content from digital camcorders and cameras

Customers loved the increased range of formats natively supported by the Windows 7 Beta, but noticed areas where they wanted broader support.  For example, one was unable to seek to a specific spot in the video in Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center for AVCHD content that was imported from a digital camcorder. We’ve addressed this.  Also, while the support for video from some digital cameras worked great, we also got feedback about supporting a broader set of devices out of the box.  We’ve since added support for Windows Media Player to natively support the .MOV files used to capture video for many common digital cameras.

This morning my trophy wife came into the office asking me to look at the movies she recorded at school yesterday.  I put the drive into my computer and copied the nearly 2GB’s of files to the computer.  After the first one finished copying I double clicked the file and even though the icon showed Windows Media Player I didn’t notice.  Then Windows Media Player started and too my surprise started playing a QuickTime file. 

As soon as I realized what was happening I paused the video and had a moment of silence.  It’s little gems of features like this that make you realize why so many people are going to love Windows 7. 

The best part?  Media Player plays QuickTime movies BETTER than QuickTime.  Movies start instantly and use less CPU than QuickTime.  Plus you get a native supported Windows application that takes advantage of other Windows 7 features (previews).    Here’s a sample video playing in Media Player that I took right before Hurricane Gustav hit this past year. 

YARTIW7
Yet Another Reason to Install Windows 7

Now that we have .MOV support native in Windows 7, my only other request is for Windows Live Movie Maker to support .MOV files. 

I thought I had everything tested after my recently Windows 7 RC upgrade this weekend and was ready for work this morning.  One thing I didn’t actually test was getting my work development VM on the Internet or VPN.  Turns out I had a problem with the network drivers in VMWare.

Here’s the lovely error I got when I tried to enable the network card on the VM.

“The virtual network drivers on the host are incompatible with the installed VMWare application. Expected version 5. Please reinstall the product. Virtual device Ethernet0 will start disconnected.”

This error was confusing since I didn’t have version 5 installed.  I’ll spare you the war story I went through to fix this and the countless reboots.  Here’s the end to the means.  I downloaded VMware and told it to “Repair” the installation and then rebooted. 

Someone else had the same problem after a Vista to Windows 7 upgrade.  I tried the fixes listed in the thread below but they didn’t work for me.

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/197009

Looking at the Network settings in Windows before and after the repair of VMware these two adapters were missing after the upgrade and then added back in during the repair.

All is well and good now. 

Glad you asked.  I finally got around to installing Windows 7 RC this morning.  The only hardware related problem I had during my upgrade was my Microsoft VX-6000 LifeCam.  When I ran the compatibility check during the upgrade Window 7 told me to uninstall the software for the LifeCam.  I stopped the upgrade and uninstalled the LifeCam software and then restarted the upgrade.  After the upgrade I was wondering how much of a pain it was going to be to get the camera working again. 

The first thing I did was open Devices and Printers.  Notice the new icons?  Fancy huh?

The LifeCam VX-600 is listed as having a problem.  I right clicked the icon and pressed troubleshoot.

The system then runs through a series of checks to detect the problem.

Then it came back with a solution.  Brilliant!

I of course clicked on “Apply this fix” and waited.

Whoops, my problem is NOT fixed.  Now what?

The reason it couldn’t be fixed is the camera requires software + a driver.  Turns out to fix this was simple.  There are updated versions of the LifeCam software that work with Windows 7.  Downloads for this and other Windows 7 related software can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/windows7/support.mspx. 

After a quick download and update of the new software everything is working. 

I’ve been running Windows 7 in virtual machines for awhile and on an older notebook.  This is the first time I’ve had it on the metal on my main workstation.  I have to say I’m pleased with being able to A) run x64 with no issues and B) open the device manager after the upgrade and see no known hardware problems.

I can say I didn’t have the same experience with Vista.  As more things unfold I’ll try to keep blogging if I run into issues or other things.  So far, so good.