Techie Musings

Install Microsoft Windows 7 ISO from USB Flash Drive

Want to install Windows 7 from a bootable flash drive? The easy way is to use Microsoft’s Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool to make your USB flash drive bootable and copy over the files.

Silverlight Podcast - Expression Encoder 3

Download and listen to a podcast on Microsoft Expression Encoder 3, featuring screen capture and flexible compression profiles.

Right click to save either of the following files:

Download Microsoft Silverlight Podcast - Expression Encoder (Enhanced AAC Podcast for iPod)

Download Microsoft Silverlight Podcast - Expression Encoder 3 (MP3)

Silverlight Podcast - IIS7 Media Services 3.0

Download and listen to a podcast on IIS7 Media Services 3.0, which powers the Silverlight Smooth Streaming technology.

Right click to save either of the following files:

Download Microsoft Silverlight Podcast- IIS Media Services (Enhanced AAC Podcast for iPod)

Download Microsoft Silverlight Podcast - IIS7 Media Services 3.0 (MP3)

Home Built Intel Atom-based Windows Home Server

I completed my Intel Atom-based WHS build last night. This is a project that has languished for about a year and started with a “free after rebate” mini tower case from Fry’s, a spare motherboard, CPU and RAM. I bought a 5 drive internal SATA backplane like this one and five 500GB SATA drives (these days, I expect you can get 1TB drives for the price I paid).

The build was left incomplete for a while because (1) the SATA backplane didn’t actually fit in the free case, (2) in another case it required surgery to fit without hitting the motherboard, (3) the motherboard wasn’t compatible with the SATA RAID card I had, (4) the other motherboard was not suitable for a WHS build since it was too powerful. You know what it is like: the quick weekend project that ends up consuming time, parts, blood and sweat.

Fast forward to today and I came across the Intel D945GCLF2 board. It sells for around $80 and has Gigabit Ethernet, one PCI slot, one PATA port and two SATA ports. All you need to add is RAM and storage. Note that there is also an Intel D945GCLF board, which is very similar other than it has a single core Atom and a 10/100 Ethernet adaptor. I specifically wanted GbE for this application. I’ve had good luck with Intel boards, though there are a few other Atom-based mobos out there.

For installation, I temporarily added an IDE CD-ROM drive. This also proved useful for installing the motherboard drivers, since the out of the box WHS install didn’t recognise the network driver.

Since this board only has 2 SATA ports and I need 5 for the SATA backplane, I added a cheap 4 port SATA PCI card based on the Silicon Image 3114 chipset. Fry’s had a Sabrent one for $25 but this was either DOA or incompatible (no card ID banner on POST and unrecognised by WHS). I picked up an otherwise identical but differently branded card from another store. This card displays a Silicon Image RAID BIOS banner on POST and once I installed the driver and management utility, appeared in WHS. The SATA board is configured in pass-through mode so that it isn’t doing any form of RAID, leaving WHS to manage the drives, which appear as SCSI devices.

With everything set up, WHS now sees the two drives connected to the motherboard SATA ports and the other three drives connected through the PCI card. It has a “whopping” 2.5TB of storage!

Silverlight vs. Flash Installation in Firefox

I recently went through the exercise of installing both Flash and Silverlight in Firefox on Windows on my new netbook. I’m using a beta build of Windows 7 and IE still comes with an old version of Flash which usually gets updated by Adobe fairly painlessly when you hit a Flash site. However, Firefox doesn’t come with Flash and if you hit a Flash-enabled site, you get prompted to install the plug-in by Firefox. What amazed me is the number of steps required to install Flash in Firefox compared to Microsoft’s competing technology called Silverlight. Let’s take a look:

Visit a Flash-enabled site like Hulu

 

Step 1: Click on Install Missing Plug-in button in Firefox.

Step 2: Can’t install it automatically, so need to do a Manual Install…

Step 3: Manual Install means being sent to Adobe Flash download page.

Step 4: Download the Flash player installation file in Firefox.

Step 5: Firefox asks me if I *really* want to install this binary (yes, I know I can turn this nag off).

Step 6: Doh! Firefox is running and needs to be closed down.

Step 7: All Firefox instances need to be close – I had 4 open including the download box.

Step 8: Flash is installed.

 

Step 9: I finally get to the content.

 

So after 9 steps, I get to the content. Now let’s take a look at the Silverlight installation experience.

Visit a Silverlight-enabled site like Netflix Watch Instantly.

Step 1: Click on Install Now to get the Silverlight plug-in

Step 2: Run the Silverlight installer.

Step 3: Install the Silverlight plug-in.

Step 4: Silverlight is now installed. While you’re told to restart browsers, the Silverlight Netflix player had already started in the currently open Firefox session.

So what’s the takeaway? It is an easier and quicker experience for the end-user to install Silverlight in Firefox than it is to install Flash due to a more streamlined installation experience, lower user interaction and reduced cognitive load.

I don’t care about download size, installation time, or the fact that once one of these plug-ins is installed you don’t need to reinstall them. I’m just looking at this from an initial installation experience standpoint.

(Disclosure: I work for Microsoft, though these are my personal views and findings.)

MSI Wind and Windows 7 – One Click Install

Today, I installed the Windows 7 beta on a new MSI Wind netbook (I’ve decided to return the Acer Aspire One due to its limited battery life, lack of Bluetooth and poorly designed trackpad buttons).

There’s not much to say really. While I did our network-based installation at work, I anticipate that installing from a DVD and having an Internet connection would go the same. End result: a fully working and configured machine including all the devices with no hitting up the web for drivers! Astonishing. This is the best Windows installation experience I’ve ever had and this is with a beta OS!

Windows 7 on Acer Aspire One Netbook

I am trying out an Acer Aspire One netbook. It is one of the cheaper ones, but its performance is similar to all the other ones out there. It is available either with Linux or Windows XP but I wanted to see how Windows 7 would run on it.

I installed Windows 7 Build 7000 from a DVD (connected via USB) and was pleasantly surprised to find everything apparently working when it had finished. The wireless network adaptor did not work but rebooting fixed it and brought to light a problem, which I have not yet solved: the WLAN works half the time. If it is working, reboot and the WLAN hardware will not be configured and will show up as Ethernet adaptor. Reboot again and it be configured as an Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Network Adaptor.

You can install a Synaptics trackpad Vista driver in order to get some additional functionality, but it works fine without it. The Aspire One has two memory card slots, which do require a driver to work. The memory card reader controller is a JMicron JMB38X and you can find a Vista driver here.

Note that the latest BIOS is version 3309 and can be downloaded here. However, for some ridiculous reason, the only way to update it is by booting the machine into DOS from a bootable floppy. Fortunately, there are instructions on this site on how to create a bootable USB flash drive for this purpose.

Overall, Windows 7 (and Office 2007) work well on this little machine.

How to defeat version checking in BootCamp.msi

Here’s a quick set of instructions for disabling the version checking in BootCamp.msi. This is what I did in order to make the patched BootCamp.msi referenced in this post.

The reason you may need to make these changes yourself is that chances are that the BootCamp.msi supplied with newer Macs is different to the one that I have available and previously patched.

Windows 7 on a Mac (again)

At the end of October, I posted about running Windows 7 natively on an Intel-based Mac and installing the Boot Camp drivers. Numerous commenters found that what I described did not work for them. Since my system was working, I haven’t had to reinstall the Boot Camp drivers, but with the availability of a new build of Windows 7 and the reinstallation that it requires, I’ve had to repeat the Boot Camp installation.

First of all, the method described in my October post continues to work for me. Perhaps I didn’t describe it in enough detail, so I’ll try again. Before I get started, don’t expect support or responses from me about this. It works on my MacBook Pro (version 3,1) with Windows 7 Build 7000 and Boot Camp drivers from the Leopard installation disk. If it doesn’t work for you, I can’t help. I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t have time. Sorry.

Running Windows 7 PDC Build on a Mac with Boot Camp

  

Update 30-Dec-2008: There have been a lot of comments saying that this doesn't work, but there have equally been comments saying that it does work. Other than saying that "it works for me", which isn't very helpful, here's what I did to modify the BootCamp.msi. Download an MSI editor like InstEd to edit the MSI file. Look in the tables and find references to VersionNT. Version 501 refers to XP. Version 600 refers to Vista. Replace references to VersionNT=600 with VersionNT>=600. This will tell the installer to install Vista drivers and reg keys for Vista and above. For comparison, the version of Windows 7 that I'm running (PDC Build 6801) shows up as 610.

If you're trying to run the build of Windows 7 given out at PDC on your Mac using Boot Camp, you will need to install the Boot Camp drivers just as you would do with Windows XP or Vista. However, the Boot Camp installer checks the OS version string and will fail.

While you can install the drivers individually, you will not get everything. The most obvious missing pieces are keyboard hotkey support and the on screen display. To fix this, I tweaked BootCamp.msi so that it will install Vista drivers for Vista and above (i.e. Win7). This is what you need to do:

    Install Windows 7 on your Mac from the installation media. Do this by holding Option down during boot and selecting the optical drive as the boot device.
    Once Windows 7 is installed, copy the Boot Camp directory from the Leopard installation DVD to a folder on your Windows 7 install. Note that to eject the DVD, you will need to go to Computer, right click on your optical drive and select Eject.

    Download the patched BootCamp.msi from here and copy it over the original that is located in Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple.
    Run setup.exe located in Boot Camp and all the drivers should install correctly.

 

On my MacBook Pro, I noticed that audio was non-functional and the RealTek driver supplied with the Boot Camp drivers did not work. I was able to get a later driver from the RealTek site to work. You can download it here (get the "Vista Driver(32/64 bits) Driver".)

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