WIM2VHD – Convert Windows Installation WIM’s into Bootable/Sysprepped VHD’s

MSDN Code Gallery - Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) Converter

“The Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) command-line tool allows you to create sysprepped VHD images from any Windows 7 installation source. VHDs created by WIM2VHD will boot directly to the Out Of Box Experience, ready for your first-use customizations. You can also automate the OOBE by supplying your own unattend.xml file, making the possibilities limitless.

Fresh squeezed, organically grown, free-range VHDs - just like Mom used to make - that work with Virtual PC, Virtual Server, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Windows 7's new Native VHD-Boot functionality!

…

Requirements

• A computer running one of the following Windows operating systems:
  • Windows 7
  • Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V RTM enabled (x64 only)
• The Windows 7 Beta Automated Installation Kit (AIK) or Windows OEM Pre-Installation Kit (OPK) installed.
• A Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 installation source, or another Windows image captured to a .WIM file.

…

Examples
Create a Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Standard Core VHD, named foo.vhd
CSCRIPT WIM2VHD.WSF /WIM:X:\sources\install.wim /SKU:SERVERSTANDARDCORE /VHD:C:\foo.vhd

Create a Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Standard VHD with an automatically generated name
CSCRIPT WIM2VHD.WSF /WIM:X:\sources\install.wim /SKU:SERVERSTANDARD

Create a Windows 7 Home Premium VHD with an automated setup answer file
CSCRIPT WIM2VHD.WSF /WIM:X:\sources\install.wim /SKU:HOMEPREMIUM /UNATTEND:C:\stuff\unattend.xml

…”

Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) Converter - WIM2VHD 6.1.7033.0 Beta

“…

Files

WIM2VHD.WSF
source code, 77K, uploaded Wed …

Documentation (Word .DOCX)
documentation, 48K, uploaded Wed …

Documentation (PDF)
documentation, 535K, uploaded Wed …

…”

Okay, that’s pretty cool. I can see how this could come in real handy as we, my practice (division/business unit/etc), begins to move toward virtualization (cough… finally… cough… ;) and Win7/Win2k8R2 nears.

(via The Road to Know Where - Microsoft Blogger Releases "Windows Image to Virtual Hard Disk Converter" (WIM2VHD) for Windows 7)

.Net Framework/OS Map – Helps answer the question, “What version of the .Net Framework can be installed on what Windows OS version?”

The Blomsma Code - .NET Framework platform availability

“I had to find out which platform supports which version of the .NET Framework. The information is a little fragmented, but here is the overview I came up with.

…”

You know, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a list or map or thing like this. Short, sweat and to the point, I liked it (and a couple things surprised me like that .Net 3.5 couldn’t be installed on Win2k3 RTM, etc)

WPF Data Binding CheatSheet – Three pages of Data Binding data

Ndb Tech - WPF XAML Data Binding Cheat Sheet

“One of the best things about WPF is the advanced data binding support, the Binding class that is used to create data bindings has many interesting and useful options.

And I never remember the more advanced options when I’m writing XAML.

So I wrote a very detailed “cheat sheet” for the WPF Binding class, I hope you’ll find it useful.

WPF XAML Data Binding Cheat Sheet (PDF). [GD: Please click through to the post for the PDF link]

This is the first draft, I’ll update it when I find mistakes and based on comments to this blog post.

…”

Since I’m a WPF noob and because you hear so much about the goodness that is WPF Data Binding, I wanted to capture this for future reference.

(via WindowsClient.Net -> WPF Wonderland - WPF Data-binding Cheat Sheet)

LightSpeed 2.2 Released – SimpleDB, ASP.Net Dynamic Data, Stored Procedure and more added.

Mindscape Blog - LightSpeed 2.2 released

“We’re pleased to announce the release of LightSpeed 2.2, available for download today. Here’s what’s new in this release.

Stored procedure support

You can now use stored procedures to retrieve entities from the database. …

Multiple views per entity type

On a related note, although LightSpeed has always been able to use views, you’ve previously had to define a specific entity type for each view. In 2.2, you can use a view as a pre-defined query, so that a single entity type can be loaded through multiple different views. …

ASP.NET Dynamic Data support

You can now create ASP.NET Dynamic Data sites off your LightSpeed models. …

Amazon SimpleDB support

LightSpeed is the first .NET O/R Mapper to support Amazon SimpleDB out of the box. …

Designer improvements

We’ve added a number of options for customising the generated code, including making properties internal and/or virtual (useful if you use a mocking framework for your unit testing), placing CLR attributes on the generated properties and even excluding properties from being generated at all (useful if you have some special domain logic that needs to go in the property implementation).

The designer can now also generate Windows Communication Foundation data contracts for you.

…

And many more enhancements

Plus lots of other smaller tweaks, improvements and fixes. We always publish a complete change log of the changes made in each point release.

LightSpeed 2.2 Express Edition is available for free download, and existing customers can upgrade free at the store.

…”

SimpleDB support is way cool and since I’m a Sproc kind of guy I like see that support too. I also think the ASP.Net Dynamic Data support is pretty interesting too.

The Express Edition is a cool way to check out this product, though limited to eight model classes, it comes with the complete docs/samples and you can even get it without registration (which is a nice touch).

 

Related Past Post XRef:
“Query Analyzer” for SimpleDB – Visual Studio 2008 Add-in that makes querying SimpleDB almost too easy?
Amazon's new SimpleDB Service

Vista Bridge v1.4 Released – Now with custom controls for Common File Dialogs, BreadCrumb control and Aero Glass

MSDN Code Gallery - Vista Bridge Sample Library 1.4

“…

The Vista Bridge Sample Library also includes sample applications that demonstrate many of the features included in the library. A help file for the library, (vistabridgedocumentation.chm), is included.

The latest version (1.4) of this library includes various bug fixes and new features like Custom Controls for Common File Dialogs, BreadCrumb bar control and Aero Glass.

…”

Vista Bridge Sample Library 1.4 - Vista Bridge 1.4

“…

VistaBridge1.4
source code, 2321K, uploaded Fri… 
…”

The Vista Bridge project continues to chug along…

Here’s a screenshot of the included Bread Crumb Bar Control Demo

And a shot of the Projects in the included Visual Studio Solution
 

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Vista Bridge (v1.3) available on MSDN Code Gallery
It’s the Bridge to… Vista – Getting and installing Vista Bridge Sample Library
Ease Use of Vista Task/Common Dialogs with Project Glidepath Windows Vista Bridge Package

AlphaFS – Some Max_Path, Transactional NTFS, hard links, and more .Net System.IO.File/Path/Directory Help (alpha)

CodePlex - AlphaFS - Bringing Advanced Windows Filesystem Support to .NET

“AlphaFS is a .NET library providing more complete Win32 file system functionality to the .NET platform than the standard System.IO classes. Features highlights: creating hardlinks, accessing hidden volumes, enumeration of volumes, transactional file operations and much more.

…

AlphaFS provides a namespace (Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem) containing a number of classes. Most notable are replications of the System.IO.File, System.IO.Directory and System.IO.Path, all with support for the extended-length paths discussed above. They also contain extensions to these, and there are more options for several functions.

Another thing AlphaFS brings to the table is support for transactional NTFS (TxF). Almost every method in these classes exist in two versions. One normal, and one that can work with transactions, more specifically the kernel transaction manager. This means that file operations can be performed using the simple, lightweight KTM on NTFS file systems, through .NET, using the interface of the standard classes we are all used to.

AlphaFS also contains a little security related functionality (in Alphaleonis.Win32.Security), providing the ability to enable token privileges for a user, which may be necessary for eg. changing ownership of a file.

This is an alpha release, and it is likely to contain bugs, and interfaces may change as the library evolves.

The library comes with full API documentation in CHM and Windows Help 2.x format.

The library is Open Source, licensed under the MIT license.

…”

While we wait on better File/Path/Directory IO from the BCL team (it’s time MAX_PATH be put to bed, isn’t it? The NTFS file system, since forever has supported 32K path lengths, it’s the OS “A” API’s that seems to be seems to be holding us back…), here’s an interesting project.

The project seems to be very active, with being code checked in yesterday, Sunday, and seem to be aggressively working on improving the it. The code, c# is well documented and there’s even a CHM…

The AlphaFS team is also actively looking to help/integrate into other projects, for example I just saw a request from them on the vXCopy project. If System.IO.File, System.IO.Directory or System.IO.Path just are not enough for you/your project, before you go writing your own pinvoke wrappers, you might want to check out this project.

 

Related Past Post XRef:
The Long Path for the BCL Team
Subsytem for Unix (SUA) Utilities and SDK For Windows 2008 and Vista SP1
The PInvoke tool you've been looking for all this time... the "PInvoke Interop Assistant"
Using GetFileAttributes to Test for File Existence
Unicode Path Fun...