Just a quick reminder to ALWAYS back up ALL data still accessible (or remove the not required disks physically) before using wbadmin to do a sysrecovery (it happened on Windows 7 Prof. 64 Bit but there is a common codebase with Windows Server 2008R2). While doing a sysrecovery I carefully excluded several harddisks (using copy and paste for the cryptic disk identifiers required as arguments for excludeDisks). Nevertheless an excluded disk was overwritten with partitions created during the sysrecovery. I guess it is because the backup included partitions using Windows software RAID 1 and that while recreating the mirror the excludeDisks: parameter wasn't checked ... *BAM* - bad luck. So, yes, it seems to be a "special case", but this isn't Windows 0.9, is it? ;)

PS: If you wonder ... I could recover all current data from a disk mirror that wasn't connected (with 2 additional backups on external hdds up my sleeve ;)

Als 1 & 1 Windows Server Kunde lohnt evtl. ein Blick in die Energieoptionen. Mein dort gehosteter physikalischer Server war - abweichend von den von Microsoft empfohlenen Einstellungen - auf "Power Saver" gestellt (Saves energy by reducing your computer's performance where possible). Gut für die Umwelt, für das 1 & 1 Bankkonto, aber vielleicht nicht unbedingt für leistungshungrige Applikationen ...

After unsuccessfully trying to run the different versions of the Microsoft Windows 8 Developer Preview on VMware Workstation 7.x I've just installed the 32 bit version on Hyper-V running on top of Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. Installation was smooth and fast ...

Update: Just started Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express running in Windows 8 Developer Preview 64 Bit installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V!

ISO-Images available for download at http://dev.windows.com

A client is using Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 on Hyper-V server. Currently two USB drives are used for the internal SBS 2011 backup. For security reasons one of them is always kept at an external location.

Because of current Hyper-V limitations we have to connect the drives to the Hyper-V server, set them offline with the diskpart cmd tool and attach them to a virtual SCSI controller; only then the drive can be used inside of SBS 2011 for backup purposes.

Today I tried different ways to switch to the other USB drive and disconnect the one formerly in use. I believe the trouble started because at first both harddisks where connected when I selected the other one in Hyper-V manager.

After disconnecting the "old" drive Hyper-V manager showed the new "SCSI" drive but it wasn't visible in the virtual SBS 2011. After several virtual reboots, configuration changes (remove drive, add it again), a physical server reboot I finally removed the virtual SCSI controller, readded it, readded the drive ... and it was once again visible in SBS 2011 and backup worked without any problems.

The moral for me: When using the current Hyper-V 2008 R2 Server make sure that you first shutdown the virtual machine, remove the backup USB-drive from the virtual machine configuration, remove the physical drive from the host, add the other physical USB backup drive, add the drive to the virtual machine configuration ...

If one of my readers knows of a more user-friendly way to handle the described scenario I would be very grateful to hear about it!

The little pleasures of a developers life ...

RangeAttribute throws a run time error in SetUpValidator(RangeValidator1) when a decimal sign is included and the client language is German; most likely a localization issue in the .NET 4.0 Dynamic Data Framework

// [RangeAttribute(0.0d, 9.999d]

[RegularExpression(@"^[0-9](\,[0-9]{1,4})?$"]
    public dynamic x {get; set; }

Final localized solution using InMemoryMetadataManager and my custom base class:

AddColumnAttributes(
           p => p.x,
           new RegularExpressionAttribute(Resource.FunctionCoordRegex)
              { ErrorMessage = Resource.InvalidFunctionCoordValue});

Method in generic base class:

static public void AddColumnAttributes(
          Expression<Func<T, object>> propertyAccessor,
          params Attribute[] attributes)
    {
        InMemoryMetadataManager.AddColumnAttributes<T>(propertyAccessor, attributes);
    }

Just a few snippets so feel free to ask ... ;)

When I migrate to new PC hardware I usually virtualize the existing hardware - just in case I've missed something. While using VMware vCenter Converter 4.3.0 I had trouble getting my virtualized "old" Dell Notebook running XP Prof. to start: Blue Screen, Stop 0x7b. The solution: Choose the SCSI Bus Logic Controller in the Converter (instead of the default IDE) ... Obviously this was the default in older versions of the converter but, hey, life would be less interesting without such "improvements" ... ;)

Die Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 Sicherung funktionierte nach einigen Updates (inkl. SharePoint Foundation 2010 SP1) plötzlich nicht mehr:
(Fehler bei einem Volumenschattenkopie-Dienst-Vorgang; Unknown error (0x800423f0)

Kritische ShartePoint Foundation Fehler im Log:
Ausnahme der Methode 'Execute' der Auftragsdefinition 'Microsoft.SharePoint.Search.Administration.SPSearchJobDefinition' (ID c5f1f053-c487-4034-95bc-da2380895e52). Weitere Informationen finden Sie unten.
Das Gerät ist nicht bereit. 

Lösung: Manuelle Ausführung von PSCONFIG

Im Rahmen des Beitritts meines PCs zu meiner Domäne (Hyper-V virtualisierter SBS 2011), habe ich mein lokales Benutzerkonto ebenfalls mit umziehen lassen.

Alles scheint korrekt funktioniert zu haben - bis auf den Zugriff auf einen Ordner mit verschlüsselten Dateien. Zwar war das Zertifikat vom lokalen Benutzerkonto mit in das Domänenbenutzerkonto umgezogen. Allerdings war damit keine Entschlüsselung meiner Dateien möglich. Ein Export dieses Zertifikats war nicht möglich.

Ein Import eines vor einiger Zeit auf CD gebrannten exportierten Zertifikat funktionierte unter dem alten lokalen Benutzer nicht ("Ein interner Fehler ist aufgetreten"). Das dort ursprünglich vorhandene Zertfikat war im Rahmen des "Profilumzugs" verschwunden.

Unter einem anderen neu angelegten Benutzer "test" konnte ich dieses Zertifikat allerdings importieren; genauso wie später unter dem neuen Domänenbenutzerkonto (dort wurde das vorhandene Zertifikat ersetzt). Vielen Dank an Oliver Lohkamp für die Idee mit dem neu angelegten Benutzer!

Moral: Immer das EFS-Zertifikat sichern! Gute Freunde sind wichtig! ;)

Yesterday I started having a pressure sensitivity issue in Adobe Photoshop CS5 (64 and 32 bit) with my Wacom Intuos 3 tablet (see link for more info). Another Wacom tablet on my computer had the same issue while my tablet was working ok on another computer. So it turned out to be a Wacom acknowledged problem with the current Wacom driver pro616-7_int.exe that I had been using for months! No idea why the trouble suddenly started only that Wacom knows about this problem since at least January and hasn't released a new version ... well it's only with the "old" tablets ... pro615-3a_int.exe seems to be working now.

Saving (almost) all the data on my internal hard disk drives took about 12 hours using USB 2.0 and a WD 1,5 TB external drive. So the time was right to finally turn to USB 3.0. Since I had a free PCI-Express slot I got a LogiLink USB 3.0 2-Port PCI-Express Card for better performance. On my Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit I had to install a driver that I chose to download from the LogiLink website instead of using the supplied cd.

My image backups will be saved on a WD My Book Essential 3TB drive. Just make sure to save the WD software stored on the drive before you delete it from the drive - you might need it. Just right clicking the drive in Explorer and reformatting it with Windows tools (and default settings) isn't a wise move because afterwards it might LOOK like it's working alright (including the ability to copy gigabytes of data on it) but I got errors when trying to save an image backup on the drive. Since today I wasn't in the mood for long dives into Windows internals (yesterday I rescued a defect hdd by temporarily exchanging the drives electronics - enough drama ;) I used the supplied WD Quick Formatter.exe software. Right now my first backup on the new drive is running and saving 1,5 TB of data should be finished in about 4 hours time ...

PS: I have been using Outlook, Lightroom and (shortly) Photoshop while the image backup is running in the background; this certainly wouldn't have been a good idea while using my motherboard's internal USB 2.0 controller!

PPS: In total the backup of 1,5 TB of data took 5.5 hours. Not quite as fast as I first estimated but for the first half of the backup I had been using the computer.