Category: Uncategorized

Why is Windows 8 and Office 365 So Hard To Configure

~ chriseyre2000 ~ Leave a comment

I have finally convinced my mother to buy a new laptop to replace her ageing XP system.

You would think that the setup of a modern laptop should be so simple that the supplied instructions should be enough. This needs some serious work as it is currently not useful.

Partway through the setup it asked my mother to sign in with a windows live account (which of course she does not have). Then she was prompted to create an account with a maximum password length of 16 characters (I was recommending the modern style three words plus punctuation but this was not going to work).

Eventually she got the machine up and I helped her to install “start is back” to make the machine usable (I can’t explain the metro interface over the phone).

The next step was to install office 365. This again required the creation of a windows live account (why the product has a licence key number that should be all that is required).

The windows live account is asking for a lot of personal details that are frankly none of the business of the installation process.  As long as the user has a valid email address is all that is required – why do they need to know DOB and gender. It would even be possible to make sensible guesses as to language and country from the browser data used.

Partway through the process it asked you to check your email – which my mum did on her android tablet (not having set up the email on the new laptop yet). There was no way to get the user interface on the laptop to accept that the newly created username was valid. It required a full restart of the registration process (including re-entry of the 16 digit code) and this time to sign in with the now validated windows live account.

My mother now has a new laptop with office installed, but there is no way that she could have got this working without help. Microsoft need to invest in usability studies for various age groups. This is after firing whichever team thinks that the metro UI is in any way usable.

Powershell wmi classes

~ chriseyre2000 ~ Leave a comment

This is how to get a list of wmi providers:

Get-WmiObject -Namespace “root/cimv2” -List

These can be queried as follows:

Get-WmiObject -query “select * from win32_processor”

This is effectively granting you sql style queries against features on your machine.

Latest Azure Guest OS

~ chriseyre2000 ~ Leave a comment

As of the end of 2014 we have:

Family IsDefault Version
3 False WA-GUEST-OS-3.17_201407-01
3 False WA-GUEST-OS-3.20_201410-01
3 True WA-GUEST-OS-3.21_201411-01
4 False WA-GUEST-OS-4.10_201407-01
4 False WA-GUEST-OS-4.13_201410-01
4 True WA-GUEST-OS-4.14_201411-01

According to the documentation site (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ee924680.aspx)  the latest versions are due to expire on the 11th of January with the new versions being enabled on the 5th January. I guess that means a lot of people will have to spend their first week back at work testing the new os release in the 5 working days before the existing guest oses are retired.

Updated Azure Guest OS List

~ chriseyre2000 ~ Leave a comment

Azure Guest OS List

Family IsDefault Version
1 False WA-GUEST-OS-1.37_201407-01
1 False WA-GUEST-OS-1.40_201410-01
1 True WA-GUEST-OS-1.41_201411-01
2 False WA-GUEST-OS-2.29_201407-01
2 False WA-GUEST-OS-2.32_201410-01
2 True WA-GUEST-OS-2.33_201411-01
3 False WA-GUEST-OS-3.17_201407-01
3 False WA-GUEST-OS-3.20_201410-01
3 True WA-GUEST-OS-3.21_201411-01
4 False WA-GUEST-OS-4.10_201407-01
4 False WA-GUEST-OS-4.13_201410-01
4 True WA-GUEST-OS-4.14_201411-01

The official update http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ee924680.aspx is a month old.

Some of the expiry dates are getting stale – it claims that items that are still active are already retired.

It should be updated weekly.

According to the source the most recent oses will become unavailable on the 11th January 2015.

This is great – straight back after new year on the 6th January and we will have less than a week to get the next os ready.

Webpicmd and boxstarter

~ chriseyre2000 ~ Leave a comment

On any sufficiently complex team project you will eventually need to find a way to keep the developer machines (and the build servers) aligned.

The web platform installer is a great way of getting started on this.

Now the webpi also has a command line version that must be run as admin.

The following will list the software that you have installed:

webpicmd /list /listoption:installed

Then you can build a script similar to the following:


#Install-WindowsUpdate -AcceptEula
#Update-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
#Set-ExplorerOptions -showHidenFilesFoldersDrives -showProtectedOSFiles -showFileExtensions
#Enable-RemoteDesktop
#Enable-MicrosoftUpdate
#Set-TaskbarSmall
# install Visual Studio instances, SQL Server first
# Web Platform Installer (get a full list of packages you can install from webpi using "clist -source webpi")
#cinst webpi
#choco webpi IISExpress_ByPlatform
#choco webpi SQLLocalDB
#choco webpi WIF
#choco webpi WDeploy
# Web Platform Installer : Specific Versions – need to update to latest if newer exists
#choco webpi WindowsAzureSDK_2_2
# Visual Studio Extensions
#Install-ChocolateyVsixPackage "VsVim" http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3-46ca-8fe1-0e90e3f79329/file/6390/46/VsVim.vsix
#Install-ChocolateyVsixPackage "IndentGuides" http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/e792686d-542b-474a-8c55-630980e72c30/file/48932/19/IndentGuide%20v14.vsix
#Install-ChocolateyVsixPackage "SpellChecker" http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a23de100-31a1-405c-b4b7-d6be40c3dfff/file/104494/2/VSSpellCheckerPackage.vsix
#Install-ChocolateyVsixPackage "VSCommands2013" http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/c6d1c265-7007-405c-a68b-5606af238ece/file/106247/15/SquaredInfinity.VSCommands.VS12.vsix 12
#Install-ChocolateyVsixPackage "ProductivityPowerTools2013" http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/dbcb8670-889e-4a54-a226-a48a15e4cace/file/117115/3/ProPowerTools.vsix 12
#Install-ChocolateyVsixPackage "WebEssentials2013" http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/56633663-6799-41d7-9df7-0f2a504ca361/file/105627/31/WebEssentials2013.vsix 12
#Install-ChocolateyVsixPackage "SlowCheetahXmlTransforms" http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/69023d00-a4f9-4a34-a6cd-7e854ba318b5/file/55948/22/SlowCheetah.vsix
#Install-ChocolateyVsixPackage "AngularJsSpaTemplate" http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/5af151b2-9ed2-4809-bfe8-27566bfe7d83/file/119298/2/Extension.vsix
#Install-ChocolateyVsixPackage "VSColorOutput2013" http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/f4d9c2b5-d6d7-4543-a7a5-2d7ebabc2496/file/63103/7/VSColorOutput.vsix 12
#Install-ChocolateyVsixPackage "HotTowelSpa2013" http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/1eb8780d-d522-4dcf-bf56-56f0eab305c2/file/111219/4/HotTowelSpa.2013.vsix 12
# Browsers
#cinst GoogleChrome
#cinst GoogleChrome.Dev
#cinst GoogleChrome.Canary
cinst Firefox
cinst Opera
# Source Control
cinst git.install
cinst git-credential-manager-for-windows
cinst SourceTree
#cinst Post-GIT-HG
cinst github
#cinst hg
#cinst svn
#cinst tortoisehg
#cinst tortoisesvn
#cinst tortoisegit
#cinst visualsvn
#cinst VisualHG
#cinst tfsSidekicks2012
# Editors
cinst vim
#cinst sublimetext2
#cinst markpad
cinst visualstudiocode
cinst atom
cinst brackets
# JetBrains (PhpStorm has everthing that WebStorm does and more)
#cinst dotpeek
#cinst dotTrace
#cinst resharper
#cinst PhpStorm
# RegGate
#cinst reflector
# Web / Internet / Network
#cinst nginx
#cinst curl
#cinst nmap
cinst wireshark
#cinst OwinHost
#cinst Wget
# Social
cinst skype
cinst slack
# Languages
cinst nodejs.install
#cinst ruby
#cinst ruby.devkit
#cinst Lua
#cinst clojure
#cinst HaskellPlatform
#cinst groovy
#cinst golang
#cinst scala
#cinst python
#cinst php
#cinst erlang
# development utilities
cinst yeoman
cinst fiddler4
cinst linqpad
cinst kdiff3
#cinst beyondcompare
#cinst mysql.workbench
#cinst GnuWin
cinst dependencywalker
cinst typescript
cinst HxD
#cinst snoop
cinst stylecop
#cinst ScriptCs
cinst ilmerge
cinst postman
# general utilities
#cinst 7zip.install
cinst sysinternals
#cinst pstools
cinst putty
cinst filezilla
#Install-ChocolateyPinnedTaskBarItem "$env:programfiles\filezilla\filezilla.exe"
cinst rdcman
cinst greenshot
cinst hashcheck
#cinst AzureStorageExplorer
cinst lockhunter
#cinst sharpkeys
#cinst f.lux
# end user
cinst treesizefree
cinst iTunes
#cinst kindle
cinst vlc
# Environment
#cinst Microsoft-Hyper-V-All -source windowsFeatures
#cinst IIS-WebServerRole -source windowsfeatures
# cloud
cinst dropbox
cinst googledrive
#cinst OneDrive
#cinst sugarsync
# graphics, games, audio
cinst OpenCV
#cinst openal
#cinst unity
cinst blender
cinst freecad
cinst inkscape
cinst audacity
# testing
#cinst specflow
#cinst nunit
# Continuous Integration
#cinst NAnt
#cinst jenkins
#cinst cruisecontrol.net
# Android Development
#cinst android-sdk
#cinst AndroidStudio

view raw

boxstarter

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Then in a powershell prompt:

START http://boxstarter.org/package/nr/url?https://path/to/myfile.txt

This with a bit of testing can give you a full machine setup for say your CI servers without requiring complex maintenance.

This is before you have to write a single script!

Why is Apple Software Considered Intuitive

~ chriseyre2000 ~ Leave a comment

The iTunes application is probably the most counter intuitive software on the planet. This seems to cotradict the claim that Apple software is intuitive.

I have an iPod suffle – the only way to remove a single track was to remove all music and reload it. The UI has entirely from random elements with no clue as to how to navigate between them.

Azure Guest OS Updated at Last

~ chriseyre2000 ~ Leave a comment

The following is the current active Azure Guest OS Version as at 16:40 gmt 1st November 2014

Family IsActive IsDefault Version
1 True False WA-GUEST-OS-1.36_201406-01
1 True False WA-GUEST-OS-1.37_201407-01
1 True True WA-GUEST-OS-1.40_201410-01
2 True False WA-GUEST-OS-2.26_201404-01
2 True False WA-GUEST-OS-2.28_201406-01
2 True False WA-GUEST-OS-2.29_201407-01
2 True True WA-GUEST-OS-2.32_201410-01
3 True False WA-GUEST-OS-3.16_201406-01
3 True False WA-GUEST-OS-3.17_201407-01
3 True True WA-GUEST-OS-3.20_201410-01
4 True False WA-GUEST-OS-4.10_201407-01
4 True True WA-GUEST-OS-4.13_201410-01
4 True False WA-GUEST-OS-4.9_201406-01

It can be assumed that the current N-1 will be disabled on the 1st December 2014 according to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ee924680.aspxhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ee924680.aspx

This does mean that we currently have three available OS version rather than the normal two.

The Azure team do not seem to understand that peak uses of cloud software are likely to be at weekends and overnight.

Cloud environments at large scale ups are likely to be entertainment or advertising based which spike when consumers are at home.

The best time to patch a cloud platform is 8 am GMT on a tuesday morning, preferably after informing your customers that you are going to do so at least a week in adavnce.

I am going to post an update of this whenever I notice a change in the deployed environments.

Example of code analysis from StudioShell.Provider

~ chriseyre2000 ~ Leave a comment

### check-code.ps1 ###

# Run this in the Package Manager Console first – a solution must be open.
#Install-Package StudioShell.Provider

#The following should be run in the Package Manager Console in the form . pathtofilecheck-code.ps1 | out-gridview

#This is a great way of finding code entities where the filename does not match the elements name.

dir dte:/solution/codemodel -recurse | where Kind -Match ‘vs.*(Class|Enum|Interface)’ |select PSPath, Fullname, Name, Kind | % {

$toMatch = “$($_.Name).cs”;
if ($_.PSPath -NotMatch $toMatch) {
return $_
}
}

Azure Guest OS – We Need Accurate Documentation

~ chriseyre2000 ~ Leave a comment

I am not sure what is currently going on with the Azure Guest OS Availability.

Currently 3.17 is the default active one, and 3.16 is the non-default inactive one.

There are however two versions of each of 3.18 and 3.19 waiting in an inactive state.

The only source of dates for the expiry of these is:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ee924680.aspx

3.16 is listed as expiring yesterday (Oct 10 2014) and 3.17 is due to expire on monday (Oct 13 2014).

3.18 has already expired and 3.19 has a TBD release date.

Given that I work with a product that we like to test on an os before we actually deploy it we are in a rather difficult position. We can deploy what we have to test but will at some undefined point we will need to move to the newly released versions and retest them.

This is not a very satisfactory poisition to be in.