How to Upgrade Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 RTM

Since you are reading this post I assume you discovered you cannot upgrade Windows 7 RTM from Windows 7 RC1. This is because Microsoft put some checks and balances in the install code to prevent you from doing so. As with everything else this is treatable with a little surgery.

Warning:
What I am about to show comes with no warranty or guarantees. Just like modifying your registry, do this at your own risk.

The following instructions should get you through the upgrade process.

• First you need to download a copy of Windows 7 ISO file from Microsoft. You can do this either through your TechNet or MSDN account.
  
• Now that you have that you will need to decompress the files to a folder on your hard drive or network drive. I use PowerISO, but you can use what ever utility you are comfortable with.
  
• Once the files have been extracted locate the INI file entitled "cversion.ini". This should be located in the "sources" folder. Open it up in a text editing utility or Visual Studio 2008.
  
• Now you have to know a little about what you are doing to make this work. There is a line "MinClient". This is used by the installer when checking to see if you have a valid upgrade version. Let's change this to the value less than the build number of RC1 which is 7100. So we will change it to 7000.
  
• Now save you changes and close the text editor.
  
• Now recompress this back to an ISO file and burn to DVD.
  

Now when the disk runs you should get the option to do an upgrade.

A Journal for IT Architects

While traveling the world, via my keyboard i came across a source for Architects. It is an electronic journal on MSDN.

The following is pulled directly from their site:

"The Architecture Journal is an independent platform for free thinkers and practitioners of IT architecture. New editions are issued quarterly with articles designed to offer perspective, share knowledge, and help you learn the discipline and pursue the art of IT architecture. The Architecture Journal reaches over 53,000 subscribers worldwide. Click here to receive a free print version."

I have reviewed several of the articles and found them worthy of noting.

Please feel free to review the site and tell me what you think.

Cool MS Office Programming Tool For .Net

Have you ever tried to code with Office VSTO? Found it difficult to develop or deploy it? I have spent a great deal of time and energy developing Office Outlook add-ins over the last year. I have successfully done so with the out of the box tools in VS 2008 and VSTO 3.0. Microsoft has done a great job getting VSTO 3.0 to be very powerful and feature rich but I did find some issues that really caused me weeks of headaches and frustration.

But recently I was asked to take what we developed in house and create a deployment package for not just MS Office 2007 but also 2003 and imbed a SQL Express installation and seed data into the MSI.

This presented various problems seeing how I was first using only Office 2007 and deploying internally with the “Click Once” technology.

When I tried to develop an MSI I found it was not very straight forward as one might think. When researching I found 2 really good walkthroughs for deploying MS Solutions using an MSI. Please see Deploying Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Solutions Using Windows Installer (Part 1 of 2) and Deploying Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Solutions Using Windows Installer: Walkthroughs (Part 2 of 2) if you are interested in trying this yourself from scratch.

Otherwise you may want to take a look at this 3rd party vendor who created a nice VS add-in and Project Templates to help not only deploy but also make it version independent. The company is called Add-In Express. Their tools are by far some of the best I have found and as far as the cost.

Ease of use is phenomenal also. They have wizards that will walk you right through project creation and deployment. Also they have real good samples on their entire feature set so that you can get a good idea how to proceed right from scratch.

If you are doing any production worthy coding in MS Office 2003 or 2007 and want ease of development and deployment this is by far the best route to go.

Check them out and let me know what you think.

Welcome to my blog...

Welcome to my blog. I have been resistant of blogging for some time now. Thinking that is was another fad or toy that would soon go away, you know like the telephone and the television. Much to my dismay is has not so with that in mind I have decided to see how all this new fangled stuff works. I am joining the masses. Moving with the river rather than resisting it.

What do I intend to accomplish with this blog? There are a couple things. First I want to share with the world some, if not all, of my experiences and knowledge. OK so that is done in one or two paragraphs but there is more. I am hoping this blog will stand out from others in that it is a place you can come and share with me in some of my unique discoveries and lessons learned. We live in a fast paced and ever changing world. And the technologies we use are changing and evolving even faster. I believe no one person can know it all. But I do believe that one person can make a difference.

So please read my blog join in the conversations. Add you own spice to the life of this blog. I do ask that everyone be respectful of each other’s ideas and open minded. There is never one right way to do things so please respect the other participants with that in mind.

Thank you for coming and enjoy….