gabrewer.com

Well, I finally got around to figuring out why I could not install the Windows 8 Release Preview on my Lenovo ThinkPad W520.  Every time I went to install the OS it would hang during boot.  That issue turned out to be that I needed to install on a GPT disk using the UEFI bios.

Before doing that I installed the latest bios from the Lenovo site.

After upgrading the Bios and backing up the little data I wanted to save, I proceeded to install the OS.  I went through the boot process fine, installed the installation files reboot and then hung at 90% when configuring devices.  After fiddling with the video driver settings Optimus, Integrated and Discrete, I tired disabling the wireless card and the install completed successfully.

After the installation was complete, I installed the Lenovo Windows 8 beta drivers turned the wireless adapter back on, crossed my fingers and rebooted and I am finally running Windows 8 on my Lenovo W520!

Update:  After installing all the Windows 8 drivers there was one unknown device.  Turns out it was the ThinkPad Power Management Device.  I downloaded the Windows 7 driver from the Lenovo site and everything seems good.

Time to start burning through bandwidth.

Latest pre release versions are now available

Windows 8 Release Preview http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download

Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh670538.aspx

First found via http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/

Also Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate is also available. http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us

Last night I was playing around with the Visual Studio 11 settings and something I did caused the dark theme to use a white background.  Reselecting the dark theme did not reset the background.  After consulting Bing, I found the fix.  This is a known issue with a simple fix.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/davedev/archive/2012/05/07/help-visual-studio-11-beta-dark-theme-incorrectly-using-white-background.aspx

The other day I needed to test the Mail functionality of an application I was developing on Windows 7 and I realized that the built in SMTP server had been removed.  I initially thought about just installing the free version of SmarterMail and configuring that but I decided to take a look and see what else I could find.  I ran across smtp4dev on CodePlex.  Codeplex Link

smtp4dev captures emails that are sent to localhost on whatever port you configure smtp4dev to listen on.  You can then inspect the formatting and content by choosing an entry in the list and selecting Inspect or View.

Inspect shows a window that lets you see the MIME parts (Source, Headers, Body) and the raw Message Source. View opens the email message in your default email program.

smtp4dev even supports SSL/TTL allowing you to specify a certificate to use for the secure connection.

smtp4dev is an easy to use utility that provides some powerful capabilities that can make integration testing email functionality in your apps easier.

Becoming effective with PowerShell is quickly becoming essential to working effectively with Windows Server products.  With PowerShell modules for so many products it is getting hard to keep track of all the command lets.  Luckily Jonathan Noble has put together a list of PowerShell Quick Reference Guides and Cheat Sheets for various products.

http://www.jonoble.com/blog/2011/12/12/powershell-quick-reference-guides-and-cheat-sheets.html

The new MVC 4 beta was released last Thursday / Friday.  One of the big changes is the moving of the WCF Web API into the ASP.NET MVC code stream.

Get the bits and the initial documentation on the ASP.NET Web API page at http://www.asp.net/web-api

The team has provided some initial guidance on migrating from the WCF Web API to ASP.NET Web API on the WCF CodePlex site.

ScottGu has an overview on his blog along with a video of a presentation that he gave at the Belgium and Dutch TechReady events.

Jon Galloway interviewed Brad Wilson about the ASP.NET MVC 4 release.  Brad Wilson on ASP.NET 4 Beta and ASP.NET Web API

Henrik Nielsen the Principal Architect on the WCF Team has a post on the new HttpClient for ASP.NET Web API that has been back ported from .NET 4.5.

I plan on migrating my current project using the WCF Web API and ASP.NET MVC 3 to the new ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET MVC 4 API this week.  After spending a lot of time last week getting Ninject work work with the WCF Web API, it looks like the ASP.NET Web API makes it trivial.  But it was still a good learning experience right?

I am also contemplating moving to the new .NET 4.5 beta when it is released.  It looks like the asynchronous support on C# 5 will be very useful with the new ASP.NET Web API.