Metro vs Desktop

As i finally persuaded myself to take a shot at the latest OS in town primarily because of the huge discount that MS fished out to me for a win 8 pro upgrade from my all time fav win 7 and i happily took the bait.Here is the link for the same (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/windows/buy?ocid=GA8_O_MSCOM_Prog_FPP_Null_Null)

So there i was downloading the ISO at the very instant that i got a chance .Initially it would download the Win8 Upgrade Assistant and once you have finished reviewing it like this.

 

The assistant would also do a check whether the programs in the existing OS are compatible or not in the new Win 8 OS.

Once you have downloaded the ISO which has a size of approx 2.76 gigs,you are ready to go as you can either burn the it onto a drive or make a bootable Usb and install it .Please ensure that you have taken down the serial key before you move to other things.Obviously they would have mailed you the key as well,but keep it handy and safe.

There is a good article by Tim Fisher on how to clean install Win 8 which will pretty much cover everything you would ever want during installation.Here goes the link once again (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/ss/windows-8-clean-install-part-1.htm) .And here is the part where he explains how to do it via USB. (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/a/install-windows-8-usb.htm).

Once you land into the Win 8 world you will be taken aback initially by the Metro look but then you will feel back to Win 7 world when you hit Windows Key(this key acts as a switch between the 2 worlds).Never ever i have so often used this key as now.Its almost impossible to keep my hands of it as you would soon realise that nearly all the shortcuts are based on it.

Before we run and install the shortcuts,we will all feel the never ending urge to install all the required softwares and go to each of their sites and install .But do you remember them all?Don’t bother, following is the link from Scott Hanselman who has prepared a list of all the shortcuts in windows 8 here as well as a well written article on win 8 tricks.  (http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Windows8ProductivityWhoMovedMyCheeseOhThereItIs.aspx)

Also here is the list of most used software that we would ever need from Scott !(http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2011UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx)

Finally to just let the whole thing start sinking i would leave you with a video from Scott on YouTube which would make you a lot more comfortable on the new OS.

 

My favorites in Windows 8 are hitting Win + PrintScreen and it goes directly into the picture folder as  a PNG.Also if you a dev guy you will find yourself hitting Win + X key a lot of times over the next few years!For people who hate finding the charms with your mouse hit Win + C.It is next to impossible not to love the new copy-paste mechanism built in .Did i mention the new Task Manager? Its a gem! And hitting del a file no longer asks you for confirmation ,unless you do shift +del.

Finally my two cents is Win 8 will not excite the enterprise market as the new OS is in neither land .Its not tablet nor desktop and this leaves a lot to be desired on a system which is not having touch screens.But then Windows were always like this.They were always the patches and fixes and bugs and SP1/SP2/SP3 guys.So they ended up having a OS which was a mix of everything.God forbid lest it become the next Vista!

The Shift trick!

Though I am really ashamed of this late realization ,but till date I never knew how to run a command prompt to the present directory path. So for lesser mortals like me,this is how you do it. As simple as this.

All you need to do is press SHIFT while right clicking on a empty space in the window. And lo you have it ! You will get the option “Open command window here” .

 

How to a run the ASP worker process under another user credential

Well i discovered this when i had to debug a service on a server on which i no permissions.Since it was a WCF call and was hosted on the IIS,i figured i needed a cheat.So this is what i did.Before i start with the details let me tell you the environments that i have been using.VS-Studio –2008 dotnet stack on Windows XP(sp3).And i was using IIS 5.1 on my machine which is an XP.So here goes.

First change the username and password in the machine.config under the processModel tag as shown below.

Code Snippet

1. <system.web>
2.     <processModel autoConfig="true" userName="username" password="******"/>
3.     <httpHandlers/>

And i tried adding permission to the C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files folder too.

That resulted in an error which gave an “Failed to access IIS metabase” error .So finally i figured MetaAcl tool needs to be downloaded from the following location

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/7/3/57316f36-ded6-41f0-b694-8b0102ade818/metaacl.exe

This has a metaacl.vbs script which adds permission to the users.You need to add the file to the following folder c:\Inetpub\Adminscripts and then go this folder from the command prompt.Then run the command

c:\Inetpub\Adminscripts>cscript metaacl.vbs IIS://LOCALHOST/W3SVC

                                     mydomain\mydomainaccount RW

 

For more info go to the following KB article in MSDN.(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326902)

Uninstall IE9 Beta?

For those who are not happy with the IE9 Beta version(or for that matter any MS updates on your system) or have a issue/bug with the same can remove it from your WIN-7 with the following easy steps.

1.Go to the control panel and click on add/remove programs or go to run and hit “appwiz.cpl” and your list of programs pops on screen

2.Next you will find “View Installed Updates on your left hand side”.Click on it and you will find all the updates that you have made post your installation of the Windows 7.

3.Search through the updates (hint:it will be under Microsoft Windows separator) and click on uninstall to remove IE9 and you will be reverted to the default IE8.

**Note.You can also find the turn windows feature on/off on your left hand too.Use it sagaciously to install which ever feature turns you on/off!