In windows 7 there are several great shortcuts that can make you day in front of the computer better, and here are some of them than I use often … and some of them I just know of.

Windows + Arrow

You can move the active window around on the screen.

Windows + Left Arrow Will dock the window to the left	Windows + Right Arrow Will dock the window to the right
Windows + Arrow up Will maximize the window to the current screen.	Windows + Arrow Down (do it again and it will minimize)

Windows + Shift + Arrow up

Like the shortcuts above, hitting these keys will stretch the active window vertically. Pressing Windows + Down will restore it to the previously size.

Alt + P

When you are in a explorer and want to preview things. Pressing Alt + P will bring up a preview window in the left part of the Explorer window. It can be used on all types of documents … but there is a startup time for them and depending on the time of document the first preview can take some time show.

Windows + + ( plus key ) and Windows + – ( minus key )

Brings up the magnifier, so if you are showing something on a projector on a daily basis this is great. Consider you are showing how a program works, instead of lowering the resolution to something like 800x600 … you can just quickly zoom in on it.

You can of cause zoom out again using the other shortcut – Windows + – ( minus key )

Windows + P

Will manage multiple monitor setup more easily or if you just connected a projector. Pressing the key P again while holding down the Windows key will loop over the available options.

Windows + [number]

Here in my Taskbar i have:

1. visionapp Remote Desktop 2010
2. Visual Studio 2008
3. Firefox ( of cause )
4. Messenger
5. Total Commander
6. Windows Explorer
7. Photo Viewer

Pressing Windows + 7 and this will bring up the Photo Viewer if there were only one instance. Here i got 2 so it lets to toggle between them. If there are no instance running of the program it will start one for you.

Ctrl + Click

Holding down Ctrl while clicking a program icon in the taskbar will toggle between the instances. For example like in the above, that would toggle between the 2 instances of the Photo viewer. Here used with two instances of the Windows Explorer started.

Ctrl + Shift + Click

This will start the program clicked on with full administrative rights on the system. While not very useful I, it can be used as pinned programs to the Taskbar, would require more clicks, so it saves a little time :-)

Conclusion

These are some of the best shortcuts I have found to date, but there are still more I guess … so in the future I will update this blog post if I find any.

You you got any that you think is missing, please to post them as comments or contact me, and I will add them.

As a MSP, we were invited to join Tech-Ed Europe 2009 conference, in which we were 3 Danish MSP’s that accepted that offer, that was Jacob Korsgaard, Allan Juhl Petersen and Mikael Syska (myself).

As I missed the first flight, cause I read the departure time wrong (god damn). I first arrived Monday morning 8:30 in Berlin, and then had to go to the Hotel with my luggege and just to get a shower, cause I smelled like crap after spending the night in the Airport.

I then took the S-Barn to the South entrance to Messe Berlin, and I then thought I was maybe one of the last people to arrive, but I was wrong.

As you can see on the picture above, there were lost of people arriving the same time as me, so after all, I was not that late at the first day, even though I missed the flight I was supposed to have taken.

When I entered the registration room, holy fuck there were many people waiting to get there badge. But it went fairly quickly. But then … 3 people in front of me, there were some problems with a persons registration and it took like 30 minutes (excluding to the 10 minutes i had allready spend in the queue, where 100 people had completed there registration) before they send him over to  another booth, where I guess they can see some additional information about the attendees. There must have been something completely wrong, I don't know. But at last I got in … weeeee.

The keynote the first day was about “The new Efficiency”. In short terms, its about cost savings, productivity and innovation. They talked about where companies have used Microsoft products to achieve these 3 goals.

Don’t got a phone with wireless access, no problem. There were plenty of computers freely available to use, and also access to a printer. So you could plan your schedule or maybe just print it, if you forgot to do it at home.

So … does we only listen to speakers, talk with other developers … not at all, 2 days at the conference there were beers, wine and food. That’s nice, and while you were having a drink you could also walk around and talk to the different speakers, exhibitors and of cause  all the other attendees.

Two of the Danish MSP won the AntMe battle, Jacob(with the WOW game in his hands) and then Allan, the 2 persons to the left on the picture. Though out the week, at the Community lounge, you were given the opportunity to program the Ants what they should do, collect food, kill bugs or attack the other ant colonies. There goals were clear … kill kill kill after they watched a demo and there strategy gave them the victory. The biggest problem was to get the game back to Denmark, because it was so big. But our ADE, Martin Esmann knew a danish guy that had traveled by car to Tech-Ed Europe, so he could bring it with him is the car to Denmark.

Yes, there are also Band Hero is here … I guess its all over the world now.

So what else did I see at the conference.

In the future I will blog about the following

Windows 7

Mostly tip and tricks ... and what i find usefull in Seven.

Hyper-V R2

How my the reinstallation of my Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008 R2 went. The people at the virtualization booth said that the preferred way was to reinstall the system completely to avoid any problems. Then just export the guess systems that are running, and afterwards import them again.

Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server

I have never used VSTS, but as I attended a few of the sessions about it, I could understand that the 2010 version is way better. MS people has to say this of cause, but other attendees were also very positive of 2010 and the new features are great.

• Graphical administration, instead of small console apps.
• Integrated Rollback are also supported now. Undo of rollback are not supported but as they said, you can rollback to a previously version to get the same effect. So rollback a rollback … that's like a undo :-)
• Better integration into Visual Studio, braches, setup etc.
• Installation in less than 20 minutes.
• And even more I will look into later.

MSSQL 2008 Spatial Data

I attended a session about spatial data in SQL and what you have to watch out for and how to debug performance problems. If I get the time I will try to make a little sample app in WPF with a SQL server with spatial data. But not sure I get the time. If one ever want to use map data, this is the way to go. So easy to do mapping etc.

WPF - Windows Presentation Foundation

As I have started learning WPF, I will blog about some of the nice and bad things I find.

What i missed were at TechEd Europe 2009

• Something about Silver light 4
• Internet at the hotel
• Shorter distance between all the halls and soda and coffee close to the sessions.
• That we did not get the bottle to have water in, so we had to get our own, totally odd.

My over all score is 4/5

The next time i attend such a big conference, I will have more knowledge how to spend my time and not waste it on session I think could be interesting. Then just skip it and and use the time with the exhibitors booths.

Just watched a ch9live webcast from PDC 2009 with Scott Gu the other day, where he talked about Silver Light 4, .NET 4 and Visual Studio and what we can expect in the future. The beta of Silver Light 4 was release 16-11-2009 and can be downloaded here. Visual Studio 2010 can be downloaded here.

He also said in the webcast that he was coming to Norway(For the first time), Denmark and a few other European countries … I did not think more about that, could be a vacation, but still, he said he was only in each country for one day.

A few days later my ADE, Martin Esmann announced that his actually will be presenting, most of the things his also did in his talk at PDC 2009.

You can register here for the event.

This rox, but unfortunately I will be occupied with a meeting that day so I can attend that event, but everybody who works with .NET should definitely sign up for the event.

Update from his twitter profile:
I'll be in Sweden, Norway, Denmark & Belgium 1st week of Dec doing talks on ASP.NET4/VS10, ASP.NET MVC & Silverlight 4. Details soon

So … my mother was uning a old windows 2000 and had been doing it since it was installed, only a few thing updated in the time and now problems what so ever with it. I keep using “If it aint broken dont update it”.

But the bank she's been using so supporting Windows 2000, the other day, so I kind a have to update the operating system now … :-(

But the computer she got don’t have a DVD drive so what to do …

Boot from a USB media, what the first option I came across, but while not sure the hardware support it, I opened my favorite seach page … google of cause and found Kevin’s blog. For reference there is a copy of Kevin steps below.

Witch looked really simple … so I started with that.

So … now I’m installing from a USB Media … awesome.

Problems I ran into:

Graphics card: Asus 7100 Pro aka GeForce2 MX 400, Windows 7 did not have a driver and I could not find one on nvidia.com so I went to google again and found this: Windows 7 and Geforce2 GTS. The file has been attached to the post. Seems to run great, and now I can run more than: 1024x768, YAHHH. Forceware 71.89 working under Win7.ZIP (18.76 mb)

Kevin’s steps: taken from Kevin’s blog post

Required:

• USB Flash Drive (4GB+)
• Microsoft OS Disk (Vista / Windows 7)
• A computer running Vista / Windows 7

Step 1: Format the Drive
The steps here are to use the command line to format the disk properly using the diskpart utility. [Be warned: this will erase everything on your drive. Be careful.]

1. Plug in your USB Flash Drive
2. Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator”
3. Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:
   diskpart
   list disk
   The number of your USB drive will listed. You’ll need this for the next step.  I’ll assume that the USB flash drive is disk 1.
4. Format the drive by typing the next instructions into the same window. Replace the number “1” with the number of your disk below.
   select disk 1
   clean
   create partition primary
   select partition 1
   active
   format fs=NTFS
   assign
   exit
   When that is done you’ll have a formatted USB flash drive ready to be made bootable.

Step 2: Make the Drive Bootable 
Next we’ll use the bootsect utility that comes on the Vista or Windows 7 disk to make the flash drive bootable.  In the same command window that you were using in Step 1:

1. Insert your Windows Vista / 7 DVD into your drive.
2. Change directory to the DVD’s boot directory where bootsect lives:
   d:
   cd d:\boot
3. Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Vista/7 image. I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G:\ by the computer:
   bootsect /nt60 g:
4. You can now close the command prompt window, we’re done here.

Step 3: Copy the installation DVD to the USB drive
The easiest way is to use Windows explorer to copy all of the files on your DVD on to the formatted flash drive.  After you’ve copied all of the files the disk you are ready to go.

Step 4: Set your BIOS to boot from USB
This is where you’re on your own since every computer is different. Most BIOS’s allow you to hit a key at boot and select a boot option.

Forceware 71.89 working under Win7.ZIP (18.76 mb)

The Danish TechEd coordinator was so lucky to get Bernhard Frank to tell all the Danish people at TechEd Berlin 2009 about all the news in IIS 7.5, and in the end there will be time for Q&A, its free for Danes.

Afterwards there will a 3 dinners menu, so the attendees don't have to wait in line for the official dinner.

I’m really looking forward for this, as I’m working on a daily basis with the IIS server.

INFO: I will update this post, when I have attended the session.

So the other day I was talking to my fellow MSP’s(Microsoft Student Partner) if some of of was using VS 2010. Most of us had tried the beta but not really used it cause it still had a slow UI, which should be fixed in the next release, BETA2.

So while writing this, I also began the installation of: Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 Web Installer (x86) - (English). Instead of downloading the normal ISO image, I would try the Web Installer this time. More on that later how it went.

I will later write something about the new features as I start using Vs 2010. For now just take a look at this link: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 Walkthroughs

So the other day I was playing around with the built-in Ftp server in Windows Server 2008 R2, but as this is only a webhost machine, and therefore not member of a AD. I used local accounts for the ftp service. But instead of having the users as local users, its possible to create them as “IIS Manager Users” … what a great way, more secure as I now dont have to disable the users so they can’t login via RDP if they should ever find the IP - tsk tsk, and they would, cause its the same as the ip to the webhost :-)

Well … it was not all that easy … the darn “IIS Mangeger Users” could not login … tried everything … all with the “550 User cannot login”. Then i found this article www.iis.net.  Under Prerequisites:

CACLS "%SystemDrive%\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config" /G "Network Service":R /E
CACLS "%SystemDrive%\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\administration.config" /G "Network Service":R /E
CACLS "%SystemDrive%\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\redirection.config" /G "Network Service":R /E

After running the above 3 commands it all worked.

Other hints

Remember when configuring User Isolation:

Thats all for now …

Recently I got these pictures email from a friend. I find them awesome … if you got more, don't hesitate to email them to me.

So the other day I was using Excel for some work I needed to do. Maximized the window with the mouse, very nice feature in 7. Ups, wrong minotor I docked the window on. So I wanted to move it to the other monitor. But wait, I could not undock it when trying to undock it from maximized with the mouse. So clearly a bug ... wheater its in Wind ows 7 or Office that causes the window to not be undockable from maximized I dont know ... 

Its no problem when its docked to either left or right ... but, not impossible to undock from maximized with the mouse ...

So if anyone know I can report this, please do tell.

Recently I downloaded skype after installing Windows 7. No problem it worked … a few days later Firefox, especially gmail started bugging, run slow, when writing mails keystrokes disappeared  … i thought that it was there servers that had some problems. But it did not stop so after more than 6 hours not being able to browse my email normal as in “fast”. I started looking about what I had installed lately and saw that crappy skype had installed a plugin. Maybe i agreed to it under the installation, maybe not … but it was causing all my freaking problems. Other states very just a little slow, but I also blamed the other end.

How to uninstall it:

• Start firefox ofcause :-)
• goto the menu: Tools –> Add-ons
• Find the Skype addon in the list and either Uninstall or Disable it.
• Restart firefox

Now you gmail runs fast again … thanks for all this skype, and wasting my time debugging this.