With the introduction of Windows 7 we have a new method we can use for booting. There is also a backport for Vista if you are so inclined to still run that as your main OS

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!

Win7, 2008 R2, Boot from VHD and more! - Christopher Kusek, Technology Evangelist

I am using this same technique for my main desktop and Laptop.  By creating the VHD images I just copied it to the new machine ran my BCDEDIT script and booted.

No re-install from DVD, find an ISO Loader, etc.

Welcome to the new Virtual World.

In addition, I now employ Differencing Disks on my MAIN OS.  You know what this means?

I can install Betas to my heart’s content and run them at pretty much full speed with no worry of trashing my OS. I am getting about a 3% performance hit from the VHD on an SSD and I have FULL Hardware support.

I have never liked the 10% or more performance hit I was getting from Virtual Machines as well as the pain of double Natting and hardware limitations they have.

BootFromVHD is really awesome for a development machine or for someone who tends to try out a lot of software.  If something goes horribly wrong, simply drop the Differencing Disk.

You do have to take merging down the differencing disk into consideration, as well as creating a new one before installing big Betas but they are stackable.  I have 4 or 5 differencing disks sometimes. for example, I have VS2010 and VS2008 in separate spaces and a third that has them side by side. Then I have a differencing disk for trying out new programs.  My Main OS Install is not touched unless I merge the differencing disk down.

There are some drawbacks, you can’t BootFromVHD with anything but Windows, and only with Vista, Server 2008 and Win7, but that is fine for me, I don’t need to boot to Linux or XP on my dev boxes.  You also can’t do some things like Windows Experience Index, but I don’t need to do that most of the time and I have other machines for that sort of thing.

I would suspect that at some point this will become a pretty common scenario once Windows developers figure out just how nice it is to develop in this environment.

One thing that always bugged me was installing device drivers in a VM, it’s much easier with BootFromVHD and if the driver BSODs, bye-bye differencing disk, no restore/rollback necessary.

Here is a guide for doing it with ONLY the Win7 Install CD if you don't need/want a sysprepped image

http://blogs.msdn.com/cesardelatorre/archive/2009/01/11/windows-7-natively-booting-from-a-vhd-virtual-pc-image-file.aspx

I just read this:

A forthcoming addition to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Windows operating system will give users the ability to burn optical discs encoded in the Blu-ray high-definition movie format directly from their desktops and without having to use third-party software, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft Windows To Support Blu-ray HD Content -- InformationWeek

And I am still left wondering, why has it taken this long to just get a plain old ISO burner for Windows built into the standard release.  Yes, I know there is a "command-line" tool in the Resource Kit, but for crying-out-loud, isn't it about time that we are able to Mount, Create and Burn ISOs with Explorer.

What I would like to see BUILT INTO ALL SHIPPING VERSIONS OF WINDOWS:

1. Right-Click a mounted CD/DVD drive and get a "Save to ISO File" option.
2. Right-Click an ISO File and get "Create Disc" and "Mount as Virtual Drive" options.

I am sure that piracy, DRM, etc. have had a hand in it, but this is something I expect any relatively modern OS to handle for me without 3rd Party tools.

When I upgraded to Vista, I had inadvertently left my audio muted.

This has been a known problem posted elsewhere the weird thing is…

Nothing was working to correct it; no Linux systems would produce sound either.

I am fairly convinced that there is something in the way the BIOS handles sound or the way the XP driver shuts off the hardware amp that is required to fix this.

The final solution was more complex than I have seen posted elsewhere so to help other frustrated M7 owners caught in this dilemma here is how I fixed it.

First the ONLY way that worked was to reinstall XP L, this was not so bad, a fresh XP Install, then add the required Toshiba Drivers: Sound, Modem (this works on the same bus.), Common Modules and BIOS Driver. Fortunately I have an extra Hard Drive or this would have been horrid.

You can now try to get sound, but I was unable to with the 3.1 BIOS.

First I had to downgrade the BIOS (which required using the CD method) and reboot.

Still, no sound, muting and unmuting have no effect.

Next I went into the Sound Control Panel and went to the Speech Tab, there is a "Test Hardware" button on that tab that will run the sound card through its paces and when it got to the Playback device, the sound magically came back on (feeding back like crazy due to mic boost, but definitely outputting sound).

Next I upgraded the BIOS back to 3.1 so suspend works in Vista and rebooted XP. I verified that sound still worked and shut down.

Next I popped in a Kubuntu Live CD and verified that sound worked there.

Finally, I replaced my Vista Hard Drive and when I booted, Sound worked, Finally…

There should be some utility somewhere that will exercise (turning on and off…) the sound card and the hardware amps, but I sure couldn't find it.

Bottom line, if you are moving from XP to Vista or Linux, make sure your sound is working (and turned ON) there first.

Keyword to help people looking for an answer…
Kubuntu, Intel High Definition Audio, snd-hda-intel, ALC262

Update: 3/26/2007, Toshiba now has the RTM versions available

Update: 3/19/2007, Intel Display drivers are available... and THAT IS ALL... gee, thanks, I have an NVidia...

This is REALLY PATHETIC TOSHIBA!!! You have LOST a long time customer.

(Update: 12/5/06, the M7 Drivers were updated today, adding Bluetooth drivers...)

(Update: 12/9/06, the M7 Drivers were updated today, adding pretty much everything to make it complete)

If the link changes, I will try to update it so it stays current.  If you notice it's wrong, please let me know.

Missing are:

nVidia Drivers, the RC2/96.85 drivers on the nVidia site are usable with a small hack though.
(There is a BIOS Upgrade for the NVidia helps with Hibernation)

Fingerprint Scanner Drivers

Bluetooth

Tablet Buttons

Audio Driver

HotKey for Display Devices

Results:

The Hibernate/Sleep mode problems are now gone... BIOS Updates fixed this

SD Works well, I read/wrote/formatted a 2G Patriot chip that fails in most machines

Toshiba Disc Creator, still has a known compatibility issue (and why do I really need this anyway... c'est la vie.)

I did not attempt the SD Boot, but it should function properly based on the other SD Tests

the Buttons actually work now but the mappings are off, for instance rotate now brings up Microsoft Snipping Tool, I don't recall ever setting the button to that, and there is no way to change them yet, I have not tried loading common drivers or other drivers from the M400 line so some might work.

Hibernation was a HUGE problem for me before... Now the one that is killing me is Rotation...  On Bluetooth my phone needs it, but synching in general is not working well, so I don't really care (yet.)

Great Job Toshiba, we now have RC1 for everything, now we should get RTM versions soon.

I really hate to gripe about this, but the plans for the next version of Windows are completely irritating to me...

What marketing genius decided that Microsoft needs to confuse the heck out of every IT staffer and developer in the world?

I just don't get it... Why do we need 7 different editions of Vista?  Isn't 5 enough?

• Starter
• Home Basic
• Home Premium
• Professional
• Small Business
• Enterprise
• Ultimate

This is just the LAMEST Concept I have heard of in years.  I wonder if all these also have 64 bit editions as well, that would make the total 14, not just 7.  They would save themselves and the rest of the development community a billion headaches if they just dropped it to ONE version, or maybe even 2. (I mean one OS here with add on modules if they want to charge for functionality, this is NOT how it is done in home vs. pro vs. server, they have different kernels/system dlls of the same name)

While this may be a great boon to the consultants and IT Outsourcing companies of the world, it will however be not only frustrating, but costly, detrimental and in some cases crippling to development companies.

Now imagine yourself as a small ISV.  You will have to take into account how your product reacts to each of these “flavors” and will force you to test on all 7 platforms just to be thorough.

No wonder Linux keep gaining ground on the desktop with approaches like this.  I guess Microsoft decided it could out Linux Linux and create forks of its own products all by itself and compete with the various distros instead of simplifying everyones life and making Microsoft the choice for less confusion. 

How many editions of OS/X are there?  OH, Yeah... ONE.

Goldberg said Microsoft will provide more information on WinFS, Indigo and Avalon in September at the company's Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles. "That's where we will unveil our entire development picture," he said.

Also, in case you haven't heard, the “official” name for Indigo in the future will be “Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)”

The development picture is going to be very exciting, this will change the entire landscape of Distributed Computing, the idea of Web Services, Remoting, MTS and several other ancient technologies much for the better.  Yes, distributed or Grid computing on a Microsoftcentric platform will now be a reality and will be easy enough for mere mortals to program.

This is by far the WORST idea I have heard in a long time.  What's even worse is influential people like Robert Scoble giving it a nod.

The best thing Microsoft could do for the industry is to sell a SINGLE core, then sell add-on packs that extend the feature set.

Why don't they do this now?  Because they make too much money selling you stuff you don't need.

It's part of the reason they have lost even 1% marketshare to Linux.  Seriously, if you already own XP, can you just buy the Media Center Add-ons today? Hell no! Reformat and fork over another $150+ for a set of features that you would probably happily go buy for $30.

I really don't want to bash Microsoft, but for Pete's Sake, don't give them any ludicrous ideas of splitting up the OS into so many damned versions that not even the experts can keep them straight.

It's bad enough already.  Let say I want to just run a webserver, I could buy Windows 2003 Server Web Edition, (which cuts a bunch of things out and restricts the license so much no one really wants it...) for about half of what I can buy Windows Server 2003 Standard.  Same goes for FileServer edition, I would love to just add a FileServer option to XP without having to add SNMP, Active Directory and all the other nonsense only corporations need.  In fact, I can't even buy File Server edition, perhaps, that is why mine are running Samba...

What would be better?  Let me buy Windows XP Pro and ADD the modules to it that allows me to run a web server... for like $50, not the $400 they are getting for W2K3WE today.

Then it would further allow me to add stuff like Active Directory, or Data Center as a module, let me grow my system as my needs grow.  I don't want to replace my entire server just to add some featureset that the lesser OS doesn't have.

After reading Scoble's blog today, I have to admit... Microsoft is doomed if they don't change the rediculously confusing approach they have to selling 12 different OS Versions at the same time.  Besides that, their Legal problems would completely evaporate and it would cause them to become innovative in each area in which they wished to compete.

It would also change the whole industry.  Why? because all the drivers would actually work on all the OS's because they all have the same kernel and API base.

Longhorn isn't even close to providing something like this even though it is perfectly capable of doing it.  Blackcomb isn't looking down that road either.  Just think, Microsoft could streamline their entire OS group into making things work even better than they already do by making an Object Oriented OS.  But Object Oriented Systems are dead.

Actually I don't believe this for a minute, SOA will never fly on the grass roots level, people are just too paranoid.  If they weren't then the NET computer Larry Ellison was hawking would have been a big hit, instead of a flop even after countless revisions.

We need and Object Oriented OS in the worst way, one that is the same from the ground up, one that works on every chipset by recompiling some core modules... but Hey! you say, I'm describing Linux...

No I'm not, Linux is FAR from object oriented, it's a mish-mash of small binary and text files that make no rhyme or reason when it's all put together, ALMOST nothing is common, ALMOST nothing is inherited.  Sure, there are exceptions, but it's not engineered that way from the start, UNIX didn't know what OOP was when it was conceived (ok, an onion is an object, but it's still a stretch) and there are so many fallover elements into Linux that it destroys the possibility.

I don't mean there are no OOP elements Any of the Major OS's, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that none of them were architected to be an Object Oriented system to work with completely plug and play components, a common base of administration rules and the ability to run on any chip that can perform boolean math!  If any of them do any of those things, they are after-thoughts.

We could make simple steps in this direction if we could just get some major players to agree to adhere to a set of standards that was duplicable and thought out from the ground up with this type of approach in mind.

An OOP OS would let you just attach anyone's word processor and it would inherit all the stuff already in the OS (or what has been replaced in it) like a textbox, a toolbar, a menu, etc. without an installation procedure at all, it would be able to just discover it.

Furthermore, it wouldn't care what you called a file (read extension), because it would know what that file was from the built-in metadata in something like XML format describing the data contained within and how to manipulate it.

But alas, I dream on for the day when “computing” actually makes sense.  I suppose that since most people only think we use 10% of our brains, that using 10% of an OS is OK too.

EDIT: I forgot to mention Croquet... Perhaps the newest OS with the most potential I have seen so far, I am going to be playing with this on X.Org's new build as soon as I have a chance to get the installation done.

“Although Microsoft hopes to ship a test version of WinFS in late 2006, it could be several more years before the revamped storage mechanism finds its way into Windows Server.

'WinFS in not in the Longhorn client,' he said in an interview. 'It is also not in Longhorn Server.'

It is not even clear if Microsoft will include it with the Longhorn update that is scheduled to follow a couple of years later.”

from and article on C|Net's News.Com

It's really most unfortunate that we won't be getting a new Windows file system anytime soon, but there are a few alternatives worth looking into.

As sizes of modest fileservers gets larger and larger, what can we turn to when NTFS is completely unacceptable in performance and capability.  One of them is to use embedded Linux, iSCSI and one of the excellent journalling filesystems that art in the GPL like AFS, XFS, ZFS or Reiser.

If you don't know already:

“Architecturally, the iSCSI driver combines with the client TCP/IP stack, network drivers, and NICs to provide the same functions as a SCSI adapter driver with an HBA.

“The daemon and the kernel driver are available under the terms of the GNU General Public License.”

Why am I even talking about this stuff?

I have a passion for creating personal library systems and that means I need a cheap yet easy to use way to access really large storage.  This storage needs to conform to interop standards so I can access it from any OS and not have a huge hassle with security logins, but not just allow anyone with access to the box to get in.

iSCSI is just one way of doing this, Its really amazing that the Linux community is pulling WAYahead in this area.  I can make a 4 Drive, 1 Terrabyte fileserver (750mb Raid 5 useable) for under $1000.  You can't buy 4 - 250G scsi drives for that right now.  For that matter, you can't buy Windows Server 2003 for that with a driveless box to run it either.

I am not sure what to do about this little system publicly but I have some ideas on how to at least help people create some plug and play mass storage for all that stuff we are collecting at home now.

What iSCSI can do that plain old NAS and SAN (without iSCSI) cannot is that it lets you just plug in a storage box to the network and treat it like a local device, I mean Windows can see it as a local drive D: but the performance and reliability is off the charts compared to plugging in a big USB drive.  If you want to store all you home movies, digital pictures, etc. in a single safe place that is possible with this scenario.  Need more capacity? Just plug in another box.

The main advantage over NAS and SAN is that it can be brought into the local system and not make you go through the hassles of setting up security with Samba for use in Windows.

If using Linux scares you because of the rediculous threats from SCO, then you can do the same thing with NetBSD and it's not contested in any way.

Wasabi Systems is one company providing a way to do exactly what I am talking about here, their hardware is a little restrictive, and so is their policy for becoming an OEM, but it at least a start into the arena.  Hopefully there will be some Open Source projects into this area that make sense of reliable storage for everyone to use, not just the geek elite or people who can pay $10K for a file server.

As a follow up to what I posted about the media UI yesterday, here is a link to a lot more information about some ideas coming out of Redmond.  We can only hope that this isn't totally crippled by DRM and items mystically disappear just because some metadata is similar to some license key that some guy in Timbuktu claims to own...

Needless to say, I am very excited about developing exactly this type of technology, I really would like to see the hooks built into the Dot Net Framework that are going to allow this, it surely can't all just be Avalon, this is apparently running on XP, or is this just a slideshow that isn't actually doing anything.

When we get right down to it.  Everything is connected by metadata and there needs to be better ways of tagging, organizing, browsing and referencing that metadata.  These are the areas I am working on right now.  When I have some more clarity on how I want to go about it, I'll be posting it, but it has alot to do with VS2005 and SQL Express 2005...

If the rest of the UI looks as good as this video demonstrates with pictures, then we are in for some really incredible challenges in the way we do basic UI design as general coders.  If anyone thinks that a Web App can even come close to something like this, they are... I'd rather not say.

Do I want an application like this... uh, yeah, like yesterday...  Do I want to write the code that it takes to achieve this?  No Way!  I am counting on alot of this stuff to be built into Visual Studio 2007 that will hopefully launch simultaneously with Longhorn so we can take advantage of all the new UI features.

Will this really happen? who knows, but as far as media applications, I chose to limp along with what I have available today and wait for Longhorn rather than try to write an all encompassing media library today.  One day I will write it, I swear (been saying that for about 3 years now...).  For today, I am just happy working on the backend and making the library and data cross referencing more robust.

BTW: Notice the startbars at the bottom of the screen are (the same as) XP...  I think this is total vaporware ATM.  We can only hope that this isn't all smoke and mirrors when it is released.