Developer OneNote

I recently notice upgrade my virtual machines hosting machine from window server 2008 to windows server 2008 R2. There are some noticeable performance drop, especially on virtual machines that handles big log files, the script execution time can be 200% than it was before upgrade.

I did some testing and it turns out power management in windows server 2008 R2 causes this performance degrading. Windows Server 2008 R2 has 3 power plan

• Balanced (recommended)
• High Performance
• Power Saver

By default, Windows Server 2008 R2 sets the power plan to Balanced (recommended) power plan. This might prevent applications from fully utilizing available hardware resources.

Change Power Plan to High Performance and the performance degrade issue does no occur any more.

You can also checkout this post for Set the power configuration to High Performance in scripts.

When you install Office Web Apps on windows 7 that has Sharepoint 2010, you will see following error message

Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):
Windows Server Features or Role Services required by this product are not enabled. 
For a complete list, refer to the link below. For the list of pre-requisites needed to install the product please refer to:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=106209
Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup.
You can install all required prerequisites for this product by selecting the ‘Install software prerequisites’ option in the splash screen. See Help for more information.

Resolution

This is because Office Web Apps can only be installed on a server operation system.  Office Web Apps can only be installed on Windows 2008 Server x64 SP2 or R2 now. Also keep in mind Office Web App can only be installed after SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint server 2010 is installed.

To install PowerShell on Windows Server 2008 R2 or Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, following features needs to be installed.

1. NetFx2-ServerCore
2. NetFx3-ServerCore
3. MicrosoftWindowsPowerShell

Because Powershell is built on DotNet framework, DotNet 2.0 and 3.5  has to be installed prior to PowerShell installation.

To install PowerShell from command line, run following from elevated command prompt

DISM.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx2-ServerCore DISM.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx3-ServerCore DISM.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:MicrosoftWindowsPowerShell

Or run following command if it’s an 64bit machine

DISM.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx2-ServerCore-WOW64 
DISM.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx3-ServerCore-WOW64 
DISM.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:MicrosoftWindowsPowerShell-WOW64 

To enable DotNet 3.5 from command line, run following from elevated command prompt

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx3

When setting up Windows Live Essentials, the setup installer might fail with one of following error code.

0×80070643

Solution: See Error 0×80070643 When Install Windows Live Essentials

0×80040609

Solution: Turn on Windows Firewall

0x8104000b Source WaitForCatalog

Solution:

• For Live Essentials Wave 4 Beta, see Live Essentials Beta Install Error 0x8104000b
• For Live Essential Wave 3, see Windows Live Essentials installation may fail with error 0x8104000b

Windows Live Essentials Beta is released

Today Microsoft announces releasing the Windows Live Essentials Beta, which include new versions of Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Sync, Live Writer and more   You can download it from http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials-beta.  You can read more about the new features here or watch the video. I also had a post for Windows Live Writer 4 new features, check it out. Read more »

WordPress 3.0 is finally released with some great new features.

I just upgraded my site to 3.0 today. The upgrade was smooth, however, I find that export doesn’t work any more. When I try to push export button to download posts xml file locally, I get following error.

Warning: Illegal offset type in isset or empty in /home/content/22/5401722/html/wp-includes/taxonomy.php on line 176
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/22/5401722/html/wp-includes/taxonomy.php:176) in /home/content/22/5401722/html/wp-admin/includes/export.php on line44
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/22/5401722/html/wp-includes/taxonomy.php:176) in /home/content/22/5401722/html/wp-admin/includes/export.php on line45
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/22/5401722/html/wp-includes/taxonomy.php:176) in /home/content/22/5401722/html/wp-admin/includes/export.php on line46

WordPress FAQ suggests checking spaces in wp-config.php and remove blank spaces before <?php tag or after ?> tag, I try and it does not help.

After trying deactivate on every single plug-in, I figure out it’s the plug-in Simple Tags that breaks WordPress 3.0 new export feature. Before Simple Tags owner releasing a fix, you can temp workaround this issue by deactivating Simple Tags plugin. After that, you will be able to get exported xml file to save.

If you see Windows could not connect to the System Event Notification Service error on VISTA, Windows server 2008, or Windows 7, you can try follow these steps to get it resolved.

1. Click Start, click All Programs, and then click Accessories.
2. Right-click on the Command Prompt and then select Run as Administrator.
3. Once the Command Prompt has opened, type following command and then press ENTER.

   netsh winsock reset

4. Close the Command Prompt and restart the machine.

Windows.old is a folder that contains archive information from previous windows system(XP/VISTA) when you upgrading to VISTA/Win7.  It mainly stores programs and files that are required to run the earlier version of Windows and contains following folders.

• Windows
• "Documents and Settings"
• "Program Files"

You might end up having a windows.old folder taking up 20+ gigs on your system drive.

If you don’t need windows.old folder and want to safely delete this folder, follow the instructions below:

1. Select Start, then All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and then Disk Cleanup.
2. If you are using Windows 7, select Clean up system files. If you are using Windows Vista, select Files from all users on this computer.
3. Select the Previous Windows installation(s) check box, and click OK.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to back up all important documents/files from the previous OS before following this article.

If you give presentation to customers you might have the question like will the screen saver disrupt my presentation by locking my laptop screen.

The answer is NO, if the PowerPoint presentation file is opened in full screen Side Show mode, screen save will never get trigged. However, it must be Side Show mode. If you have presentation opened in edit mode, and the laptop is idle longer than screen save timeout threshold, screen save will still get triggered and lock the screen.