Microlau's Blog

June 2008 UG Meeting

Our next UG Meeting is held on 5th June 2008, Level 21 Auditorium, NTUC Building from 1845 hrs – 2030 hrs. Food will be served before the session.

Office Communications Server 2007 Applications for the Enterprise
Goh Chyan Yee, Source Code Asia Pacific
1915 – 2015 hrs

With the pervasive use of instant applications in our our daily routines, companies are now are starting to explore the possibilities of leveraging Instant Messaging applications in the enterprise to boost productivity and reduce cost. In this session, we will share with the audience the APIs available for use with Office Communications Server 2007 and demo a sample application built using one of the APIs.

About the speaker
Principal Technical Specialist with over five years of experience in the IT industry, including Avanade, Citrix and K2. He is currently responsible for the pre sales team for K2 for the Singapore/Malaysia region. Chyan Yee has been working with the .NET framework since its beta days and was part of the team that took part in the inaugural Imagine Cup. During his time in Avanade as a consultant, he has been involved in many .NET projects including eCream with JTC and the IRIN project in IRAS.

To register for the event, click here. Note that there’s currently no email confirmation for the event.

Community {Heroes} Launch - Aftermath

A huge thanks to all of you who've attended the Community {Heroes} Launch last Saturday held at Microsoft Singapore. It was a successful event whereby close to 200 participants spent the day with the local MVPs and experts to learn about exciting new technologies from Singapore. On behalf of the organising team, we thank you for spending time off a precious Saturday, and for your feedback and inputs given either in person, by face or in feedback forms.

We're working to get all the slides (and demos if possible) for downloading and will be sending an email to inform all of you about the download links.

Also, lots of thanks to everyone who've helped out in the event, either during organising it or on the actual day. It was truly a community event whereby everyone chipped in their 2cents worth (time or sweat) and I would like to especially thank Dennis Chung, and Lilian Quek for all the hardwork behind the scenes.

As for those of you who attended DEV2-3 A Developer's Guide to Data Mining - Weehyong and I are truly apologetic that we didn't manage to complete the session, due to the sheer amount of contents to run through. However, we promise that there will a followup talk on this - Where we'll continue where we stopped during the launch - Demoes!

Upgrading HyperV from Beta to RC0 on HP Proliant servers

While upgrading my Hyper V from Beta to RC0 on my HP Proliant M115 server, it cronked out at 54% (somewhat) and refused to proceed any further. One bad mistake I made was not to properly shut down my VMs before patching the server (serves me right for not reading the instructions before applying the patch). So, Rule number 1 -> Read this article.

If you have a HP server, there's a reported bug with the HP network utility that interferes with the patch from Microsoft. Follow this article if the installer hangs at 54% and you cannot resume it after that.

Now that the host OS is patched successfully, go to Hyper V Manager and copy each VM's settings, and remove every one of them. Afterwhich, recreate the virtual machines, pointing to your existing .vhd files. Now, you'll need to patch each guest VM separately. Without this step, your guest VM will not have network connections.

Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB949219)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DDD94DDA-9D31-4E6D-88A0-1939DE3E9898

Update for Windows Server 2008 (KB949219)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B7464B44-821D-4A7C-9D9C-7D74EC14437C

To install the latest version of the Integration Services for Windows Server 2003, for Windows Vista SP1, and for Windows XP SP3, click Insert Integration Services Setup Disk on the Action menu in the Virtual Machine Connection dialog box.

Once you've updated your guest vm successfully, you'll need to pull up Device Manager and remove those devices showing error and remove them. Once all those problematic devices are removed, click on 'Scan for Hardware Changes' and your vm should have it's network connectivity back up.  

That should be it! Have fun!

Community Heroes Launch - Updates

My business trip to Australia and then MVP Summit

I was recently on a business trip to Melbourne and then flew to US to attend the Microsoft MVP summit. I've managed to upload all the photos during Labour Day holiday and here are all the links. Hope you'll enjoy.

Shots taken at Melbourne:

• Labour Day Parade (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/LaborDayParadeMelbourne)
• Melbourne South Bank (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/SouthBankMelbourne)
• Random shots of Melbourne City (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/RandomShotsOfMelbourneCity)
• Wine Tasting at Yarra Valley (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/WineTastingYarraValley)
• Weekend getaway at Wilsons Promontory (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/WeekendGetawayWilsonSPromontory)
• Melbourne's Royal Botanic Garden (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/AnAfternoonMelbourneBotanicGardens)
• Scenes from Central Pier at Docklands (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/DocklandsScenes)
• Sunday at Queen Victoria's Market (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/SpendingASundayInQueenVictoriaMarket)

Shots taken at Seattle (Microsoft MVP Summit):

• Downtown Seattle (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/DowntownSeattle)
• CrabPot Dinner (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/CrabPotDinner)
• Regional Dinner (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/MVPRegionalDinner)
• Product Group Dinner (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/ProductGroupDinner)
• Random shots @Microsoft Redmond Campus (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/ShotsMicrosoftRedmondCampus)
• Experience Music Project (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/ExperienceMusicProject)
• Dinner with SEA MVPs (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/DinnerWithSEAMVPs)
• Summit Closing Notes (http://picasaweb.google.com/microlau/SummitClosingNote)