So you work in IT…?

Once again the unwritten rule of ‘you work in IT therefore you are expected to know everything about any device that is powered by elastic-trickery and has some sort of user-input (normally buttons)’ came into play today.  Was it a case of “how would I list all installed MS updates on my PC using PowerShell?” or something similar?  Errr, no.  It was “how do I create contact groups on my Nokia mobile?”  Guess it goes with the territory of my chosen career path…

Anyway, today wasn’t all bad.  My copy of Windows Internals 5th Edition was waiting at home for me.

Oh, and if you did want to list the installed MS updates using PS…

Check out the (MS) research…

As you may have noticed, there tends to be a theme throughout my posts where I highlight things to do to help fill those moments of work boredom with some geek/tech-related stuff that could, if caught by your line manager, probably just about be classed as legitimate work-related research.  You’ll be glad to know that the same pattern will continue…

Today’s recommended time-filler is a trip to Microsoft Research Labs.  Now I’m guessing that there are some people out there who have the opinion that whenever Microsoft need some new tech/product they simply go out, find someone who is already doing it, buy the company, rebrand the product.  The number of projects being carried out at the various MS research centres and labs across the globe does a pretty good job of highlighting how much R&D they’re actually doing.  They’ve also got some pretty cool stuff to download.  Some of it could be classed as work-related such as the Microsoft Research TCP Analyzer, others less so such as Songsmith but worth having a play with for the entertainment value alone.  Auto Collage is another that falls into the not-completely-work-related category but is also worth a look.

Big brains…

As I’ve posted previously, Channel 9 is a good place to go if you want to geek-out for a while.  One of the most treasured books on my desk at work is Windows Internals 4th Edition, nearly 1000 pages of deep-dive into the inner workings of Windows OS’s.  To tie in with the long-awaiting Windows Internals 5th Edition, which now includes Vista & Server 2008, Channel 9 were able to get both Mark Russinovich & David Solomon together for an interview.  So for 15 minutes in the presence of two of the biggest Windows brains (David teaches MS’s own staff about Windows!) check out the interview here.

Update: My copy is ordered!

Update #2: Yay! My copy has arrived!

A blog of blogs…

One of the blogs that I subscribe to is the Official Microsoft Team Blog, which is a list of the official MS Team blogs.  There are a lot of blogs that I didn’t know existed, and a few that have subsequently turned out to hold the occasional nugget of tech goodness.  You can find BlogMS here.

Defrag a disk with PS…

At various points during the Config Manager course I was on last week there were some inevitable lulls to proceedings whilst waiting for the virtual machines to do their thing.  To fill the time I revisited the Win32 classes documentation on MSDN (okay, surely I could have found something more interesting to browse, but once a geek always a geek…).  There I came across a class that I hadn’t spotted before: Win32_DefragAnalysis.  Straight away I started to think “hmm, can I check a disk and then defrag it if required using a PS script…?”.  Granted, any normal person would have thought “Hmmm, boring.  Maybe I’ll just start an InPrivate browsing session and find something more interesting…”, but I digress.  It turns out that it’s quite easy, use Win32_Volume to identify what drive you want to analyse/defrag then use that to hook into Win32_DefragAnalysis/Win32_Defrag…

Win32_DefragAnalysis & Win32_Defrag are only available on Server 2003 and higher.  I tested this on Win7 and it ran fine, but it needs to be run elevated.

Will I ever need to use a script to defrag a drive?  Probably not, but it’s nice knowing that I could if I wanted to…

PS on Win7 RC: The same but different…

It turns out that a few changes have been made between the CTP3/Win7 Beta version of PowerShell and the version that comes with Win7 RC.  Microsoft MVP Oishin Grehan has posted a good summary of the differences here.

Up North…

I’ve spent the last 5 days attending a Configuration Manager course with three colleagues as I’ve got to get it implemented at work, with the project kick-off starting next week.  The course was pretty good with the training provider being ICT Focus who work out of InfoLab21 at Lancaster University, and if you’ve ever travelled up the M6 in the vicinity of junction 33 you’ll have seen the distinct looking orange & green building.  As a training provider/venue it was really good, I’ve certainly never been on a course where the delegate PC’s were Dell Optiplex 755 Core 2 Quad machines with 8GB RAM.  That said, the course was run on pre-built virtual machines which maybe should have been tweaked to make the most of the host PC (honestly, how well do you think a virtual instance of Server 2003 running as a DC with SQL 2005 and Config Manager on top is going to run when you only allocate 1 CPU and 620MB RAM?  Like a drunk 3-legged dog, that’s how well…).  VMs aside the training was pretty good, the trainer knew his stuff, and the lunches were good.

Our accommodation was a hotel in the centre of Lancaster and unlike the training venue it wasn’t so good.  There was a plaque on the wall outside…

…hmmm, I’m just surprised that he came back for a second visit!  It wasn’t all bad as it meant that instead of eating in the hotel we checked out some of the alternatives in Lancaster which meant that we got to eat at The Water Witch a couple of times where the food was fantastic and the beer wasn’t bad either.