Installing Windows 7 on a Netbook from USB Storage
Netbooks are cool! They are cool because they are (relative) cheap, small, and have a long battery life. However most netbooks have Windows XP as operations system. Since most of them have 1 gB of internal memory, Vista was not an option for installing on Netbooks.
Now times changed and Windows 7 has been released! Windows 7 has several editions. From ultimate to starter. And starter is the solution for netbooks! Since (a lot of) netbooks have no optical drive (DVD/CD) we have to install Windows 7 from a USB drive. The steps to follow are described below.
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Windows 7 uses a loading program called Bootmgr. We have to write code to the boot sector on our USB storage drive which is compatible with Bootmgr. This code can be written to the USB key by using the bootsect.exe program that is present in the Boot folder of the Windows 7 DVD. We can extract this code using the Command Prompt. From the Start menu - All Programms - Accessoirec - Command Prompt (right click run as Administrator!). Once the Command Prompt is open, navigate to your Windows 7 DVD (or folder) by typing the drive letter for your DVD drive, which is usually d:. If you downloaded an image from your MSDN subscription (.iso file). Mounth it using Daemon tools or Virtual CloneDrive and navigate to it in the command prompt. Insert the next line:
boot\bootsect /nt60 g:
In this line, we are telling bootsect to use the /nt60 command to write the compatible boot code to our USB drive, which is the g: drive. Substitute the letter of your own USB drive for g:.
- Now you can copy your extracted image files to your USB Drive (so not the .iso, of .img file but the root/folder structure you see if you boot from a CD or DVD.
- Before installing Windows 7, your netbook will need to boot from your USB key, rather than its hard drive. If you have a boot sequence option by booting your system, select it to USB. Otherwise (if you don't have boot options on startup screen, you have to change them). To change this, you need to enter the BIOS and alter the boot settings. How this is accomplished varies depending on the make and model of the netbook. In general, to get into the BIOS you have to press either the DEL key or one of the Function buttons. Look for a message on the screen when you first switch on the netbook; often there will be an indication of which key or key combination you should press in order to enter the BIOS.
Plug in your USB key, and switch on the netbook. Once in the BIOS go to the Boot menu and look for the ‘Boot Device Priority’ setting. In this setting, change the ‘1st Boot Device’ option to ‘USB’.
- Once you’ve changed the boot device, save your changes and exit the BIOS. The netbook will now boot from the USB key and proceed to install Windows 7. When the installation reaches the point where it restarts the system, be sure to remove the USB key, otherwise the netbook will boot from the USB key once again and will restart the installation.
Note: using Boot Sector Explorer 1.0 allows you to quickly and easily read from and write to both the boot sectors of your logical drives such as PhysicalDrive0 and the Master Boot Records (MBRs) of physical drives such as C:, D: etc. It can even examine drives that aren't hard drives, including CD-ROMs, DVDs, USB sticks and more: http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/Boot_Sector_Explorer_53209_p/. You want to make your USB drive "unbootable". Try: HDD Low Level Format tool: http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/
SharePoint 2010 Links
Harold van de Kamp (http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/harold/) just notified me about some cool SharePoint 2010 links:
SharePoint 2010: Getting Started with Development on SharePoint 2010 Hands-on Labs in C# and Visual Basic:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c010fc68-b47f-4db6-b8a8-ad4ba33a35c5
SharePoint 2010: Professional Developer Evaluation Guide and Walkthroughs
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=cffb14e8-88a9-43bd-87aa-4792ab60d320
SDC 2009 Session material
At the beginning of this week I gave two sessions at the SDN Conference at Papendal (Netherlands). The content of this sessions was about
- Social Networking in SharePoint 2007 - Building innovative WebParts using SharePoint, AJAX and jQuery
- E-Commerce using SharePoint 2007 and Commerce Server 2009
Abstract Session 1: We al know: LinkedIn, Twitter, and Hyves. Since we're using SharePoint for public internetsites more and more I developed a messaging webpart for SharePoint for quick sharing messages. This uses innovative techniques as AJAX.NET, jQuery and mySites. I will use this example to explain some SharePoint development concepts for developing innovative webparts in combination with Social Messaging. Level: 200 - Intermediate.
Abstract Session 2: Did you know the Netherlands has over 20,000 WebShops? Since a lot of customers use SharePoint it's possible that some people have to build a webshop in SharePoint. Are you writing all that kind of webparts using custom code? Or do you feel more about an out of the box e-commerce site using SharePoint? On the Dutch DevDays 09 I spoke about Commerce Services 2009 for SharePoint. Since I was a last-minute speaker (I replaced a session) there is a chance you skipped my presentation. Now you've got a second chance. Level: 100 - Beginners
All attendees received a nice green bag containing a CD with all the session and demo material. For the people who lost their CD or didn't attend the SDC, you can get the presentations here (Dutch):
SDC09 IW01 Nick Boumans - Social Networking.ppt (1.72 mb)
SDC 2009 IW02 Nick Boumans - eCommerce.ppt (2.30 mb)
For Source Codes please visit: http://spmessaging.codeplex.com or http://csextensions.codeplex.com
Commerce Server Extensions for SharePoint
In preparation to the Software Development Network (SDN) Conference, were I will give a session about Commerce Server SharePoint development (http://www.sdc.nl/tabid/91/Default.aspx?SpeakerUserName=nickboumans), I just finished a demo project for starting Commerce Server Developers. I will launch it as a Codeplex project: CSExtensions (http://csextensions.codeplex.com/) and share it with all of you! This project contains a solution for SharePoint which extens the administration functionality of Commerce Server. In future I'll trying to add more extensions. The main goal of this project is a starting project for SharePoint developers who want to start developing for Commerce Server and learn how to extend Default WebParts and "how to talk to the Commerce API".
At the moment it contains an ASP.NET AJAX SharePoint WebPart for adding products to a specific category. You can easily customize it to your own requirements. Please contact me if you have any suggestions or improvements. Below you can see some screenshots of the project.
Learning skills for developers using this solution:
- Set up and deploy a SharePoint WebPart
- Referencing Commerce DLL's
- Talk to the Commerce API from your SharePoint WebPart
- Recursively populate an ASP.NET AJAX 3.5 Treeview with Commerce Catalog Categories
- Using ASP.NET AJAX 3.5 in a SharePoint WebPart
- Adding product to the Commerce Catalog using SharePoint
- Loading UserControls (.ascx) in a SharePoint WebPart
- Using Editable properties (webpart properties) to change the catalog of the WebPart in SharePoint edit mode
- Etc.
Note: The solution is a Visual Studio 2008 solution using the tool WSP Builder (also on CodePlex): http://www.codeplex.com/wspbuilder for installing the .wsp file I use SharePoint installer (http://www.codeplex.com/sharepointinstaller).
Get All Properties using SharePoint PowerShell and use it in a SPWeb Property Bag
Especially for people who want to learn Windows PowerShell:
// Load the SharePoint assembly:
PS C:\> [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(”Microsoft.SharePoint”)
// You get an output like:
GAC Version Location
--- ------- --------
True v2.0.50727 C:\Windows\assembly\Gac_MSIL\Microsoft SharePoint\...
// Put the SPSite object in a variable (like $s or $site, prefix of variables is the dollar sign)
PS C:\> $s = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite("http://mysharepointurl")
// Get the web
PS C:\> $w = $s.OpenWeb("/some/relative/path")
PS C:\> $w.AllProperties
// You get a list with names and values
// eg __IncludeSubSitesInNavigation or __InheritsCustomMasterUrl (true or false)
Now go to your .NET code (eg feature)
SPSite site = new SPSite("http:// mysharepointurl ");
SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb("/some/relative/path");
web.AllProperties["__InheritsCustomMasterUrl"] = "True";
web.AllProperties["__IncludeSubSitesInNavigation"] = "True";
web.Update();
Another cool PS lines are:
// Whole content of all webs in the site collection
$site.AllWebs
// Only few properties
$site.AllWebs | format-table Url, ID, Name, AllUsers
// Shorter notation
$site.AllWebs | ft Url, ID, Name, AllUsers
// Execute a list query
$listguid = new-object System.Guid("yourguid")
$list = $site.Lists[$listguid]
$query = new-object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPQuery();
$query.Query = "<Where>However your Caml query here</Where>"
$list.GetItems($query) | ft Name
//You get an output of the items returned by the caml query