August 2008 - Posts
Having just installed Server 2008 64-bit on my laptop (mainly for Hyper-V) I'm now trying to make it as much like a desktop as possible. One thing that doesn't work straight away is Windows Live products, as the standard wrapper like installer prevents installation.
My workaround has been to bypass the wrapper installation you are generally forced to use by building a 64-bit Vista VM in Hyper-V and then copying the MSI installers from C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\WindowsLiveInstaller\MSI Sources. You need to show hidden files to see them.
Once you have them just run the MSIs on Server 2008 and all installs fine. It's not so easy to make out which product is which from the files names so below is the product and the first 4 characters of the GUID in the MSI file name:
Mail: 184E
Photo Gallery: 257E
Messenger: 508C
Writer: 9176
Sign-In Assistant: AFA4
Have so far tested Mail, Messenger and Live Writer and all worked OK. Of the installations give you notifications but some just run through with nothing to tell you it's done, so just check your start menu...
I make a lot of use of Virtual Server and Virtual PC (and soon Hyper-V) with my laptop and find the thing that seems to slow me down most is disk performance. I don't have the storage on my main disk so run my virtual machines on USB 2.0 disks. As my VMs get larger and busier the performance seems to get worse.
I therefore decided to take the plunge and get myself set up with eSATA. I purchased the following:
eSATA ExpressCard: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=676511
2.5" External eSATA/USB case: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=603610 (note that this comes with all cables you need, including eSATA to eSATA)
2.5" Hard Disk: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=773812
Tests are performed using HD Tune 2.55 using a quick test. It's the same disk just plugged in to a different socket so all other things (such as cache, RPM etc) are equal.
USB 2
eSATA
Quite a huge difference then on paper and I'm hoping it will make a big difference to the performance of my VMs. I'll report back with some more subjective data on VM performance over the next few weeks.
"Edison was developed by Verdiem, a company that has helped enterprises the world over reduce energy waste from IT devices. Now Verdiem is bringing Edison into your home—at no cost whatsoever. Download Edison and start saving energy today!"
http://www.verdiem.com/edison/
This is a free tool from Verdiem, whilst they also provide enterprise level power management solutions..
The popular tool from the SMS 2003 Toolkit but missing from the ConfigMgr 2007 Toolkit has now been updated and released as a stand-alone download:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c36fcda8-9336-4d44-9568-5530ff7635dd&DisplayLang=en