GeekTieGuy » Vista

Ghosting a Vista RC1 drive using Ghost 8.x

September 17, 2006 2:13 pm

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I had to do this recently to make a backup of a system hard drive for “just in case”…

I found some instructions using Google (https://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=181082&SiteID=1) and here is the gist of what needs to be done (to spare you from having to read the whole thread):

Run a command prompt as Administrator and do the following:

BCDEDIT /set {bootmgr} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {default} osdevice boot

Then run Ghost 8.x like this:

ghost.exe -fdsp
or
ghost32.exe -fdsp

I tried this with two hard drives (once with a test drive, then with the real one), and it worked beatifully.

Vista from a developer’s point of view

September 9, 2006 6:05 pm

To me Windows Vista marks a great new milestone for software developers. Not just because Microsoft invested years of development into a new programming framework, but because that framework will be included out of the box. Until now, if you wanted to take advantage of the power of the .Net Framework (1.0, 1.1 and 2.0) you had to either include the installer for the framework or create some other magic to get it on the user’s system (asking the user to please, please download and install it first?)

With Vista, not only do you get the .Net Framework 2.0 (much improved over the previous versions) in the box, but also the amazingly powerful Windows Presentation Foundation (which is what I’ve worked with), Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation (two pieces I know nothing about yet).

This will lower the barrier to entry for applications developed using these powerful tools to zero. As long as you’re writing your application for Vista you can be sure the basic requirements are there.

There will be issues with certain features of WPF (rendering in software vs. hardware, especially for 3D), but the framework helps you detect these issues and makes it possible to adapt your application to lower its “flashyness” (RenderCapability.Tier, remember this needs to be shifted down by 16 bits if you want to use 0, 1 and 2 as the human readable values).

To me Windows Presentation Foundation is the most important technology to come out of Microsoft for a long time. I’ve never written too much actual Win32 or even MFC/ATL UI code for client applications, but I’ve done a lot of HTML / CSS stuff and pure business object stuff (COM/ATL). More about that in my next post. I don’t want this to get too long.