Why to use bootable USB instead of regular CD or DVD ROM? Well, it is more convenience, takes less storage, faster and fully recycle. So let’s start.

1. Insert USB flash drive
2. Run command prompt shell as Administrator (just in case the keyboard shortcut for “Run as Administrator” is Ctrl+Alt+Shift)
3. Type “diskpart” to run Microsoft DiskPart utility.

C:\Windows\system32>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7600
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: TAMIRK-DEV

4. List your disks by typing in “list disk” or for those who like it shorter (like me) “list dis”

DISKPART> lis dis

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  ——–  ————-  ——-  ——-  —  —
  Disk 0    Online          149 GB  1024 KB
  Disk 1    Online           75 GB     2 GB
  Disk 2    Online         3814 MB      0 B
  Disk 3    No Media           0 B      0 B
  Disk 4    No Media           0 B      0 B
  Disk 5    Online           14 GB      0 B

5. Identify your flash drive (in my case it is Disk 5)
6. Select this drive to mark it for work by using “select disk 5” or “sel dis 5” command

DISKPART> sel dis 5

Disk 5 is now the selected disk.

7. Clean it (this will delete everything on your disk drive, so be careful) by using “clean” or “cle” command.

DISKPART> cle

DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

8. Create primary partition – “create partition primary” or “cre par pri”

DISKPART> cre par pri

DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

9. Select new partition – “select partition 1” or “sel par 1”

DISKPART> sel par 1

Partition 1 is now the selected partition.

10. Mark it as Active partition – “active” or “act”

DISKPART> act

DiskPart marked the current partition as active.

11. Format – “format fs=ntfs quick” or “for fs=ntfs quick”

DISKPART> for fs=ntfs quick

  100 percent completed

DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.

12. And finally my favorite command – “assign” or “ass” to mark it ready and create mount point

DISKPART> ass

DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.

13. Exit – “exit” or “exi” to return to command shell

DISKPART> exi

Leaving DiskPart…

Now your thumb drive is ready and bootable. So you can start copying files from ISO image into it.

Other option is to work with volumes rather than with disks. The all difference is in steps 4-6. Instead of “lis dis” use “lis vol” and instead of “sel dis” use “sel vol”. Maybe it is more convenience way of work because in this case you can identify partitions by labels and sizes rather than by sizes only.

DISKPART> lis vol

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ———-  —  ———–  —–  ———-  ——-  ———  ——–
  Volume 0     E                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
  Volume 1     G                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
  Volume 2         System Rese  NTFS   Partition    100 MB  Healthy    System
  Volume 3     C                NTFS   Partition     68 GB  Healthy    Boot
  Volume 4     D   DATA         NTFS   Partition     80 GB  Healthy
  Volume 5     F   READYBOOST   FAT    Removable   3812 MB  Healthy
  Volume 6     H                       Removable       0 B  No Media
  Volume 7     I                       Removable       0 B  No Media
  Volume 8     K                NTFS   Removable     14 GB  Healthy

If you already copied your image into disk, you can mark MBR by using special utility called BootSect.exe shipped with WAIK. In our case (with Windows 7 embedded), you’ll have to update master boot code to use BOOTMGR (Vista and up) rather than NTLDR (XP and down)

BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 K: /mbr

We done, have a good day and be good people. Additional information regarding USB core guys from MS can be archived from their brand new blog (hope it will be up to date).

At the end, just you to know how are CDs make by Discovery Channel

]]> http://khason.net/itpro/quick-it-tip-how-to-build-bootable-usb-stick/feed/ 1 http://khason.net/itpro/tfs-licensing-model-demystification-or-what-should-i-buy-for-my-company-in-order-not-to-step-on-the-licensing-mine/ http://khason.net/itpro/tfs-licensing-model-demystification-or-what-should-i-buy-for-my-company-in-order-not-to-step-on-the-licensing-mine/#comments Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:41:54 +0000 Tamir http://khason.net/itpro/tfs-licensing-model-demystification-or-what-should-i-buy-for-my-company-in-order-not-to-step-on-the-licensing-mine/

“Every generation needs a new revolution” – Thomas Jefferson

So, in order to win such revolution for “systems” you absolutely need static analysis tools like NDepend. Those tools are not intended for being your advocates, but those intended to help you to understand all risks and approximate the amount of work should be done to fulfill another revolution.

Unfortunately, you cannot use such tools for fair measuring of code quality because of Computer Science rules of thumb. How to decide whether “methods is too big” or “method is too complex”? However you can (and should) use it for dependencies risk detection. For example, in following illustration you can clear understand that any change inside BetterPlace.Core or BetterPlace.Model assemblies (and namespaces) can be painful.

Now the only question is who is responsible of modules, using it and how long will it take to convince them to make a revolution.

From here you can start using CQL (Code Query Language) which is SQL like language invented by Patrick, the author of NDepend, for querying code elements and sections. By using it, you can define what “method is too big” means in terms of your project.

SELECT METHODS WHERE NbLinesOfCode > 300 ORDER BY NbLinesOfCode DESC

Or see where you should replace method overloads by default arguments, introduced in .NET 4.0

SELECT METHODS WHERE NbOverloads > 1 ORDER BY NbOverloads DESC

Then, when you marked all places and human targets for revolution, you can start it. After you done, you can even compare builds and measure the amount of work and quality of results achieved.

To finalize, I just touched the tip of what good static analysis tool can be used for. So get it, learn it and use it not only when you need to make a revolutions, but also during your application design and build process to be aware about how the new monster created will looks like.

Download NDepend >>

Proper disclosure: Apr 15, Patrick, the author of NDepend, asked me to review his tool and offer one license for evaluation. I told him, that do not need to evaluate it because I’m using it for a while (also I had the license of my own) and I’ll be happy to write a review once I’ll have a bit time for it. Now it happened. Thank you, Patrick, for such good work!

Related posts:

1. Some new in-mix downloads
2. INotifyPropertyChanged auto wiring or how to get rid of redundant code

• Silverlight 3 SDK beta 1
• If you do not want to install full SDK, you can install only runtime for Windows or Mac. Then, you can read documentation online. You do not need it, if you’re going to install
• Silverlight 3 tools beta 1 for VS2008 SP1. After you have all this, go to the official Silverlight web site and start working.
• If you re “in” .NET RIA Services, you can download March ‘09 preview of it also to use with new Silverlight. It also makes sense to read about what is it in Brad’s blog.
• Also new Silverlight toolkit was released with SL3 support and a bunch of new up/down controls, LayoutTransformer, Accordion and TransitioningContentControl.
• Microsoft Expression Blend 3 Preview. It includes SL3 and WPF3.5 SP1 support, but excludes SketchFlow by now.

To learn more about Silverlight 3.0 and Blend 3.0, you can see first day keynotes at mix 09, Rollup of what’s new in Silverlight 3 by Joe Stegman. This includes offline mode support by Mike Harsh. I’ll write another separate post for this topic, due to the fact, that I’m a desktop guy, so wary about the future of WPF.

To learn more about how to use new Expression Blend, it worth to see this session by Pete Blois. Another good sessions are also wrapped for you by Scott Hanselman.

After we done with all web stuff, let’s speak about a client

• Microsoft MultiPoint SDK. Do you want to use multitouch in your application? This SDK provides you with ability to use up to 250 individual mouse devices simultaneously. And yes, it works with Windows XP SP2 too
• Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP x32, XP x64, Vista x32, Vista x64
• In case, that you do no have Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, you can download 30-day evaluation virtual hard disk of Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and see how it works .
• Also a small present for my old friends (from my military consulting era) – WPF and Silverlight APIs for GIS engine of ESRI. Have a fun!

That’s all by now, going to write a review for new book and will publish it soon (probably even before, you’ll finish with all those downloads and readings). So, stay tuned and be good people.

Related posts:

1. “Zone of Pain vs. Zone of Uselessness” or code analysis with NDepend

• Southridge, which comes from Redmond team
• Order Manager, which comes from Swiss DPE team

Both labs include WPF ribbon and DataGrid, Southridge also come with M-VV-M design sample and some other interesting features. As for me, it seemed, like some parts of those labs can be easily used “as-is” for production level applications, like it was done with SCE starter, which turned into TimesReader (by the way, it has free version again).

For those, who still trying to consider what to use for their next killer app, I propose to read following article from Jordan, which compares between Silverlight and Flash. And then see composite application guidance to use Prism for Silverlight development. Here the video of it usage by Adam Kinney from Channel 9

Have a nice day and be good people

Related posts:

1. Some new in-mix downloads

Related posts:

1. Some new in-mix downloads

Until now there are 15 possible .NET frameworks can be installed on client’s machine. Here the table of possible and official supported versions, as appears in Q318785

All of those versions are detectible by queering specific registry keys. However, in some cases, you need to load mscoree.dll and call “GETCOREVERSION” API to determine whether specific version of .NET is installed. You can read more about it in MSDN.

So it’s really simple to write small C++ application (or PowerShell applet), that queries registry and invoke your managed application. How to do this? You can either read about it in outstanding blog of Aaron Stebner, who is Project Manager in XNA platform deployment team or attend my session next week to learn do it yourself. We’ll speak about nifty ways to do it also.

Anyway, by now, you can use small stand alone program, I wrote a while ago, that will tell you all versions of .NET frameworks installed in target machine without any prerequisites. It can be run even from shared network location

Download whoooot.exe (13K) >>

See you next week.

PS: Do not forget to download and install the new version of Visual Studio Snippet Designer, which is extremely useful tool by MVP Bill McCarthy, you’ll need it later next week…

Have a nice day and be good people.

Related posts:

1. Some new in-mix downloads

What “TITS” includes? First of all –

“QOF” – Quick Open File

This tools is absolutely invaluable if you have big solutions. While all it knows to do is to search. But, wait, what’s wrong with build-in search of Visual Studio? First of all, it does not search Solution items and files, are in solution directory, but not in project. Also it cannot fix your typos and errors. Also it does not know to move you quickly to found solution item in Solution Explorer or in Source Editor.

Basic set of QOF features:

• No mouse – open any file
• No mouse – locate any file in solution explorer
• Highlighting found items
• Multiple files open
• Filter by source files only, resources, owner or any other kind of filters
• Search inside TFS, including history, changesets, shelves (either private and public)
• …and much much more

Next tool is:

“WIBREW” – Who Is Breaking What

Absolutely invaluable tool to know who actually breaking what file inside TFS. For example, I do not want to lock files, while I still want to know who holds what file. TFS provides such feature out-of-the-box, however from command prompt only. You can add it even as macro. Like this:

However it not user friendly and impossible for use, ‘cos it looks as following:

You do not know what actually developer doing, where and why. With “WIBREW”, you can know:

• When developer started to break files
• What exactly he’s doing
• Is the breaking file locked or now
• Where the developer breaks it (workspace and computer name of the user)
• …and much much more

Another tool is:

“WITCH” – What I have To Check-in

If you ever worked with Team Force, you know what this tool is doing. It shows you a preview of all changed files, you’ll check-in. For some reason, TFS has no such feature. Let’s imagine, that your work method is to check out everything, change something and check-in only changed files. Until here TFS does everything, however if you want to preview changeset (for example in order to compare with “WIBREW” output), you can not. Here “WITCH” comes to help.

[Here should be a screenshot of “WITCH”, but it looks exactly the same as “WIBREW” with shameless blurring]

Another invaluable tool is:

“VOCUS” – VOid CUstom Settings for check in

This tool is absolutely UI-less. It allows developers to work with their own custom settings in Visual Studio, while for check-in and check-out it format all documents, according predefined custom settings (for example indentation). How many times, you tried to merge files, when all the difference is indentation it tab size? Well, this tool solves this problem.

It stores custom settings for each user (BTW, it also makes able for each developer to restore his settings fluently in any computer) and reformat documents on check-in action toward corporate settings, when on check-out toward custom developer’s setting.

“SHMOC” – SHow MOre Code

This is not actually tool, works with TFS. It rather works with your Visual Studio Development Environment. It’s UI-less as well and makes able to hide and restore all docking windows in VS. It makes you able to write in “Dark Room” mode (which is full screen, distraction free environment) and return to Visual Studio within one button press. It can also change VS color scheme, if required.

There are some other tools should be inside this suite, however, I still have no names for them Also, if you have something interesting, and you want to contribute it to this suite, you’re highly welcome.

PS: This blog is about code, but this post is 6th in row without even one line of code, so I have to fix it as soon as possible. Thus, I’ll example how WIBREW works under the hood. Other words, small example of how to work with TFS API from Visual Studio plugin.

First of all, as in any VS plugin, you need to acquire DTE2 application object:

_applicationObject = (DTE2)application;
_addInInstance = (AddIn)addInInst;

When you have it, you need to detect what TFS server you’re working with and what are user credentials for this session. The common problem of WIBREW for poor men, was how to work with this tool over VPN (when your connected session is only inside VS). So each time, you tried to run it, you had to enter your domain credentials – very inconvenience way of work.

In order to prevent it, let’s ask your environment about Team Foundation information:

private TeamFoundationServerExt _tfsExt;
…
_tfsExt = (TeamFoundationServerExt)_applicationObject.GetObject("Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.TeamFoundationServerExt");

Also, you can be notified when your work project context was changed. To do this, just subscribe to ProjectContextChanged event and handle it inside:

_tfsExt.ProjectContextChanged += OnProjectContextChanged;
…
public void OnProjectContextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) {
         if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(_tfsExt.ActiveProjectContext.ProjectName)) {

Now when we know, that we have out active project context, all we have to do is to ask about changes

private VersionControlExt _vcExt;
…
_vcExt = (VersionControlExt)_applicationObject.GetObject("Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.VersionControlExt");

Inside VersionControlExt object you have following self-descriptive properties and methods: FindChangeSet, History, PendingChanges, SolutionWorkspace etc. however it works only with TFS solution explorer. To handle pending changes for the project without tickling TFS, we can use it internal methods. All the difference is with references. To work with Visual Studio TFS explorer methods, you should reference:
Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.dll, Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.Client.dll and Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.dll, while working with TFS API directly, use Microsoft.TeamFoundation.dll, Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll and Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.dll from [PROGRAM FILES]\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\. Just like this:

VersionControlServer _vcs…_vcs = (VersionControlServer)_server.GetService(typeof(VersionControlServer));…var _sets = _vcs.QueryPendingSets( new[] { new ItemSpec(serverPath, RecursionType.Full) }, null, null);…foreach (PendingSet set in sets) {…
//Get everything you need here

We done. It’s very easy to work with Team System from inside Visual Studio. Also it’s very easy to build useful tools, not built by Microsoft for some reason

Have a nice day, be good people and wait for me to beatify sources before releasing as another Open Source application.

Related posts:

1. TFS licensing model demystification or what should I buy for my company in order not to step on the licensing mine?
2. “Zone of Pain vs. Zone of Uselessness” or code analysis with NDepend

 
© Myself

It’s unnecessary to mark, that all copyrights must retain in original and derived work. Also it’s good manner to notice about original authors of open source software also in derived binary work. So if you’re using my OSS in any of your work, please mark it Please pay attention, that except MIT and MS licenses, derived work cannot use authors’ names and origin for derived software promotions.

Another common question is about Creative Common attribution under which licensed all content in this blog. It is not really license. In spite of this, you can use this attribution to mark your work. CC is all about copyright of owner attributes in derived works, but not about distribution or restrictions of any kind.

Also neither of OS licenses provide responsibility or any kind of assurance for those, who use this software as a part of derived work or in binary format.

Have a nice day, be good people, release open software to push the industry forward and show the world what you worth.

Related posts:

1. TFS licensing model demystification or what should I buy for my company in order not to step on the licensing mine?

Note, that this release is preliminary and has a lot of bugs. Also, RDS is not fully implements as well as recording capabilities with Direct Sound.

I’m keep working to provide WPF UI for this library to “productize” it.

So, what are you waiting for? Download and Spear the word with this news! This is the first and only fully managed library (as far as I know) to work with RDS, TMC and FM data. Also, there are not a lot of information about HID usage as FM receiver in managed code.

Download latest release of USBFM.DLL >>

Related posts:

1. Quick IT tip: How to build bootable USB stick