As I noted in a earlier post I have switched to using Server 2008 as my main OS and configured it so that I can boot with or without the Hypervisor enabled.

Today I got round to installing SP2 and after the machine came back up it felt sluggish, as though the Hypervisor was enabled which is odd as my default boot configuration has it disabled.

A quick check of my boot config showed that the service pack had reset 'hypervisorlaunchtype' to 'Auto' for all entries

Very annoying but easliy fixed...

The other issue I've had is that the SP install removed 'Windows Mail' from my quick launch bar. Also annoying but easliy fixed.

In my post about repairing a Saab SID I mentioned the Seattle Car Club. As their web site seems to have gone forever I have put up my own walkthrough of the SID repair process.

The page is here.

 Enjoy!

Like a bunch of folks I have moved over to running 64-bit Windows Server 2008 as the primary OS on my laptop, a Dell D830.

The only problems I've had so far are that when the hypervisor is active sound playback is very poor and graphics performance becomes very poor - resizing a window is very jerky and takes ages. VM performance is great but the host seems to suffer. If you use Virtual PC/Server you'll notice that their performance is awful when the hypervisor is active.

I recently found the solution in this blog post http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/04/14/creating-a-no-hypervisor-boot-entry.aspx.

You need to create an alternate boot configuration woth the hypervisor loaded. It's a simple fix -

1. Start an administrative command prompt
2. bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Microsoft Windows Server 2008 - no hypervisor"
3. bcdedit /set {identifier for the new boot entry (copy from the output of a plain 'bcdedit' command)} hypervisorlaunchtype off

and next time you boot you can choose to have the hypervisor on or off.

As an MCT I end up taking a bunch of Microsoft exams every year. One of the really frustrating things about the Prometric booknig system is that there is no easy way to find your nearest testing centre. This is especially annoying as I travel a lot and often want to fit an exam in at a nearby testing center.

This as now irritated me to the point of doing something about it and I've put all of the UK centers on a Google map so that I can always find the nearest one.

The map is here http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=104220127815935886384.00046502a6b697dac55b5&z=6

or

http://tinyurl.com/by444z

Hopefully other UK test takers will find this useful :-)

Head over here to see Jeffrey Snover's talk from the PDC - 'PowerShell: Creating Manageable Web Services'

Good stuff...

 At last I can explain to my kids what I do

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni_rAamVP2s

"See, it's on TV, I don't just make this stuff up!"

Those of you lucky enough to own a Saab will know that they have a problem with the SID display. Over time pixels on the display stop working and the display becomes unreadable.

Last week mine got to the point of being irritating enough to do something about it. New SID units are not cheap (approx. £200.00!), and they will eventually fail anyway, so it seemed sensible to try fixing it myself first.

The problem is caused by a ribbon cable in the bowels of the unit that works loose over time. There are a number of sites that show you how to disassemble the SID

• http://www.thesaabsite.com/93/Saab-Sidrepairs.htm
• http://www.saab9-5.com/howto/sidrepair.htm

but most of them recommend pressing down on the ribbon cable to reestablish the connections and inserting some kind of ruber or card to maintain the pressure when you reassemble the unit. Unfortunately this approach doesn't seem to guarantee a fix. I found a reference to the 'iron trick' here and a full description with pictures on the Seattle Saab Club site (seems to be down at the moment) which looked like a better solution.

 So on Saturday morning I got to work (fairly tentatively as I've never touched car electronics before)...

1. Remove the SID unit - 5 minutes
2. Disassemble the unit - 10 minutes
3. Iron the ribbon cable - 10 minutes
4. Reassemble the unit - 3 minutes
5. Put the SID back in the car - 1 minute

and...

 The display is perfect! Woo hoo! I reckon you could do this whole procedure in 15 minutes.

I can't recommend this simple procedure highly enough. If you do your own car maintenence this is a breeze, if you don't - it's still a breeze  The only tricky part is making sure that you don't pull on the ribbon cable when you have disassembled the SID.

UPDATE: since the Seattle Car Club site appears to be gone for good I have put up my own walthrough of the repair process here. 

I just saw this on Micosoft.Public.Windows.Powershell

PASH - PowerShell open source reimplementation for "others" (Mac, Linux, Solaris, etc...) and Windows (including Windows Mobile and Windows CE)

http://pash.sourceforge.net/

It just gets better and better :-)

 Trevor

One of the things that comes up quite often in my PowerShell classes is using your own .Net types so I though I'd put up a couple of entries based on a demo that I do.

I've put a zip file with all of the code mentioned in these posts into my download area.

I created a small .Net assembly containing two types, Bank and Account.

and compiled them into a file called Accounts.dll.

Now I can use Reflection.Assembly to load the dll

and create and use objects from the assembly

In the next post I'll add a custom format file so that negative bank account balances are displayed a (1000) rather than -1000.

You invoke PowerShell from SQL Server Management Studio by right clicking on a node in the tree and choosing 'Start PowerShell'. This runs 'SQLPS.exe' and starts the shell. One thing that caught me was that the resulting shell has some standard cmdlets missing. Add-PSSnapin, Get-PSSnapin, Remove-PSSnapin and Export-Console seem to have gone AWOL.

SQL Books Online states that the SQL snapins are

• Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.PSProvider.dll
• Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.PSSnapin.dll

As these are just regular snapins you can load them into the standard PowerShell host as follows -
First register the snapins using the .Net utility installutil with the commands

and check that everything is OK

Then load the snapins

Don't forget to remove and unregister (installutil /u) the snapins when you want to remove the CTP.