After releasing Windows 7 RTM to Technet/MSDN subscribers on the 6th August, Microsoft released Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 to Technet/MSDN subscribers on the 14th August.

All Technet/MSDN subscribers can now download by accessing the subscriber downloads page

Microsoft released Windows 7 to all TECHNET/MSDN subscribers on the 6th August. downloads were available around 11PM Sri Lankan time, and i made a choice to download Windows 7 Enterprise X64 Edition. according to the comparisons online, there were no feature differences between Windows 7 Enterprise Edition compared to the Ultimate Edition. only difference is that the Enterprise Edition is available for Software Assurance customers and the Ultimate Edition is a retail edition.

i was using the previous RC1 edition (Build 7100) at that time, and decided to format the computer and to install a fresh copy of Windows 7 Enterprise. but the downloading was slow as expected due to the high number of downloads. so it took me two days to download the iso image. finally managed to burn it to a DVD and installed it on my HP Pavilion DV6775TX laptop.

i was earlier under the wrong impression that both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will get released on the same day, but Microsoft blogs confirms that they will be releasing Windows Server 2008 R2 on the 14th of August.

Now it’s time for me to install all my applications and fine tune my system…

I wanted to reinstall my operating system, and I was thinking for awhile whether to install Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. I was comparing advantages and disadvantages and then I finally decided to install Windows Server 2008 R2 so that I will be able to use Hyper-V as an added advantage over installing Windows 7

On previous occasions I used "Windows Easy Transfer" tool which easily backed up my profile and I was able to restore it back on the new operating system without any hazel

But this time I thought, I will backup my self . Without using Easy Transfer, since I was anyway not sure how compatible it will be from Windows 7 to Windows Server 2008 R2. I backed up everything on to my D: drive after creating a folder called laptopbackup.

After that I took the next big step of inserting the windows server 2008 R2 build 7100 DVD on to my DVD rom and rebooted my pc. I booted from the DVD and did a clean installation of Windows Server 2008 R2 on to my laptop.

First time I logged in I noticed that most of my hardware devices were not detected. so I thought of doing a "Windows Update" and then while doing that I started coping files from my backup

After awhile I managed to install almost all drivers except for my bluetooth driver. Bluetooth on my HP Pavilion DV6775TX doesn’t seems to support. But this was not the only problem that I was facing

I opened my IE8 and noticed that I don’t have any of my RSS Feeds. I had a collection of RSS feeds which I collected for almost 3,4 years and these feeds helped me a lot to be up to date of most of the new activities relating to IT. And now they are all gone

But I’m lucky I took a copy of my entire profile before I formatted.

I managed to find the path where IE saves all Feeds by default

%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Feeds

I copied all content located in the feeds folder and pasted back in to my new profile. Closed IE and opened again. It worked !!!!

Recent requirement which i had was to extend my Remote Desktop console to my secondary monitor. initially i tried to expand it by dragging and resizing the remote desktop console, but it never worked out. however i remembered somewhere that it’s possible to do it with the RDC(Remote Desktop Connection) version 6.1. RDC 6.1 comes bundled with Windows 7, and also included on the following O/S applied with service packs mentioned below

Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008 – Service Pack 01

Windows XP – Service Pack 03

Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 – included by default

there are many other features introduced by 6.1 but i will only be highlighting one specific feature which i discovered recently.

it is the ability to span remote desktop across multiple monitors

this requires following components in place for it to work

-RDC 6.1

-All monitors should have the same resolution

-Monitors need to be aligned side-by-side

there are two ways that you can accomplish this task. one way would be to run mstsc with the /span parameter

eg – mstsc /span

or else you could configure your RDC settings to span across multiple monitors

as you can see above i have selected the option “Use all my monitors for the remote session”

when i connect to the remote computer it will extend remote desktop console across all my monitors

If you are running on windows 7, then Bitlocker To Go is something you should definitely try out

Let see how we can configure Bitlocker To Go

Requirements

You need to be running on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2

A USB Pendrive

Step by Step on how to configure

Open My Computer. Right click on the USB device and it should come up with an option “Turn on BitLocker”

Once “turn on Bitlocker” is selected it will open up the Bitlocker drive encryption Window

Once the initial scanning is done, it will provide you with two options. First option is whether to use a password to unlock the device and the other is by using a smart card

I’m going to go ahead by selecting to use a password to unlock the device. Next we should decide how we are going to store the recovery key. Recovery Key is very important incase if you lose the password or have difficulty in remember it, only way to get access to data within the pendrive would be use the recovery key. Recovery Key Storage has two options. You can print it out and store in a safe location or else you can save it as a text file. This is a mandatory step and it’s not possible to go further without selecting an option. I have decided to save as a file

After that it displays a summery. And all you have to do is click on “start Encrypting”

Time taken for the encryption depends on the size of the pendrive

After a while you should receive the following message and you have successfully completed Encrypting your pendrive

Next let’s see what happens when you plug your encrypted device on to Windows 7

As soon as you plug the device it will prompt you to enter the password.

Once you enter the password only you will be able to access data available on the pendrive

Yesterday (30-04-2009), Microsoft released the new RC1 build (7100) of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 for Technet and MSDN subscribers. However general public release will be on 5th May 2009.

some of the improvements over the Beta version

-DirectAccess User Experience

-User Account Control

-AppLocker

-System Partition Size

-Network Troubleshooting

Download Links for Technet And MSDN Subscribers

MSDN subscribers

TechNet Plus subscribers

Windows 7 Beta Expires on 1st August 2009 and Windows 7 RC will expire on 1st June 2010.

some useful links

Release Notes

Things to Know

Windows 7 Feature Walkthroughs

Microsoft has released service pack 2 for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista

You may visit the link below for notable changes on Service pack 2

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd335036.aspx?ITPID=sprblog

You may download Service Pack 2 via Windows updates or by using Technet/MSDN Subscriptions

Windows Instant search is a very useful feature that comes with windows and also with some applications such as Outlook and OneNote. it really saves alot of time when searching. Those days when we want to search for a while it takes awhile and the results come up with nothing. then we narrow down the search criteria and search again. but now with the instant search, we don’t have to wait any more. while we type indexing service will search and show the results. that’s why its called “Instant Search”. i use the instant search feature frequently on outlook to locate my emails. sometimes i use the instant search which is now embedded to Widows explorer to find files. yesterday i did a search on my Windows 7 to find a document, and i was amazed it was able to read the contents inside the files as well. but this is not a unique feature of Windows 7. it’s just that i haven’t noticed that something is possible on Windows Vista. Vista also has the same capability but the indexing service has to be turned on. so finally i learned that it’s possible to search within the files through Windows Search. my next question was, why can’t i search within PDF and OneNote. Most of the articles that i have are on OneNote and PDF. but searching within those two file formats are not enabled by default. to enable it, you need to download something called an “ifilter” in other words indexing filter. ifilter works as a plugging for Windows Search and Windows Desktop Search to index content within a document.

initially i thought it’s not possible to index content within PDF and OneNote documents. but then i did a research and found that there are pluggings that we can use to enhance the capabilities of Windows Search.

so i downloaded the Microsoft Ifilter which supports indexing contents for the following file formats

.docx, .docm, .pptx, .pptm, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .zip, .one, .vdx, .vsd, .vss, .vst, .vdx, .vsx, and .vtx.

you can download it from the link below

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=60c92a37-719c-4077-b5c6-cac34f4227cc&DisplayLang=en

and also its possible to download the ifilter plugging from Adobe as well for FREE to index PDF documents

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2611

Finally i made it …I’m on Windows 7 build 7000. it took me two days to download the 3GB ISO file. and then i installed it on a test pc first to see how stable it is with the applications i use. these are some of the problems that i have with the current build. but the solutions are out there, it’s just a matter of time

Adobe PDF Driver didn’t get installed

Nero 9 doesn’t get installed

Chrome doesn’t get installed

but I’m not bothered …as long as Outlook, IE, and Virtual PC is working, that is enough for me to survive. so i backed up my user profile using WET(Windows Easy Transfer) and then formatted my office notebook. loaded Windows 7 on to that and then restored my profile. everything is working smooth. at the moment I’m installing software and fine tuning my system. i will post more about Windows 7 in my future posts

Microsoft just announced the availability of Windows 7 Beta which Is the next generation Microsoft Client Operating System, and also Windows Server 2008 R2 beta which is the next version of the Windows Server operating system from Microsoft built on Windows Server 2008

Windows 7 Beta or Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta can be downloaded using a TechNet Subscription or a MSDN Subscription from today onwards

More information on Windows Server 2008 R2

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/r2.aspx

More information on Windows 7

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx