Windows Vista Launch Flashback

It's coming to 8 months since Windows Vista was launched in KL.  I thought I share some of the pictures I randomly caught on launch day (Feb 3, 2007).  By the way, the launch venue was Low Yat Plaza.

See more of my Windows Vista Launch Day pictures here!

 

My Vista Experience: The Story So Far...

I bought my copy of Windows Vista Ultimate (genuine copy...mind you!) on May 22 -- just about the time when my then existing Windows Vista Ultimate RC1 copy was about to expire.

My experience with Vista has been mixed.  While I love a lot of things about Vista, some features take some getting used to. e.g. the UAC (User Account Control) feature.  

The Blue Screens

I've been getting frequent mysterious BSODs (blue-screen-of-death) and I couldn't pinpoint on what is really at fault.  Perhaps it's a driver issue, or perhaps it's a hardware issue...I don't know. 

The Vista problem reporting logs did record down the "unexpected shutdowns" but the log details were too cryptic for me to interpret.  I did a chkdsk ... no problem.  I did a RAM test ... no problem.  I checked my motherboard temperature and voltage parameters... don't see any problem there.  However, my chipset fan has been giving me this grinding noise but looking at the chipset temperatures, nothing indicates there's a problem.

Windows Update Problem

Recently, I've been encountering error 80073712 (yeah...go figure!) in Windows Update.  Some googling led me to a few possible solutions but none of them worked. 

I did a scan (using sfc) to check the integrity of the system files and indeed, some corruption had occurred and the errors couldn't be fixed.  I suppose the frequent BSODs might have caused some system files to be thrown into a zombie state.

In-place Upgrade

This prompted me to do an in-place upgrade i.e. upgrade Vista with Vista. I pop in my Vista DVD and after two hours, the upgrade successfully completed.  I got my Windows Update functioning again and all of my previously installed applications seemed to work fine except for one -- Visual Studio 2008 Team System Beta 2.

I uninstalled VS2008 beta and attempted to reinstall it but .NET Framework 3.5 beta failed to install.  So, I went back to scouring the web for possible solutions and I found one. I uninstalled IIS7, installed .NET Framework 3.5 beta manually, reinstalled IIS7, and then pop in the beta DVD and to my relief, the installation went smoothly.

I guess I'll stop here before I start to rant endlessly. :-)

Read also:

• Evaluating Windows Vista RC1 Build 5600

Technorati tags: windows vista

Looking Back at Microsoft Tech·Ed SEA 2007, Kuala Lumpur

Dear Tech·Ed fans: Here are some photos of the Tech·Ed Southeast Asia 2007 conference held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre on the 10th-13th September. Enjoy!

The venue...actually you're just seeing half of it.  I captured this shot from another wing.

Tim Huckaby presenting building data visualization applications using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).  I've seen Tim at every Tech·Ed in KL.  Doesn't he just love Malaysia? :-)

Doug Mahugh on Open XML Architecture.

Games area.

Dina (of Malaysian Idol) and SerenaC (of Mix.Fm) at the Tech·Ed SEA 2007 GeekOut 2 Party at the Zouk, KL.  Geeks do know how to party eh...

Dina in action!  She really brought the house down!

See more of my Tech·Ed SEA 2007 photos here!

Read also:

• Looking Back at Microsoft Tech·Ed 2006 SEA, Kuala Lumpur

Technorati tags: teched07, techedsea2007

Windows Live Writer Beta 2

I've just installed the latest beta release of Windows Live Writer (WLW). It took Microsoft quite a while (9 months to be exact) to release this second beta.

What's New

There's a new look and feel to this neat blogging tool.  There are now inline spell checking, table editing, ability to add categories, page authoring for WordPress and TypePad, support for excerpts and extended entries, improved hyperlinking and image insertion, Paste Special feature, and new integration and compatibility features.

My Experience

Installation of Beta 2 was a breeze.  There's now a new installer.  My original weblog account settings in Beta 1 appeared intact in Beta 2 (even though I uninstalled Beta 1 from the Control Panel).

As for the new look, it seems to share the same design cues as Windows Live Messenger 8.5 Beta which I also just recently installed.  Changing the color scheme is easy; just click on the brush icon on the rightmost corner of the toolbar and pick a color.

As for the plugins, I installed the Flickr4Writer (for embedding Flickr photos), Insert Video (e.g. for embedding YouTube videos, etc) and the Code Snippet plugin for WLW.  All the plugins seem to work fine.

It's a pity that it's not possible to upload images to Blogger from WLW. It's not so much of a limitation of WLW, but rather, the Blogger APIs apparently do not support image uploading at this time. I'm sure this will change in the future.

I've not really dug into all the new features but if there's something worthy of mention, I'll blog about it more in the future.

Read also:

• Windows Live Write Beta - Take Two
• Test-Driving Windows Live Writer

Technorati tags: windows live writer, live writer, microsoft, blog tools