PeterKellner.net

I think everyone but me knows this, but just in case, I thought I’d blog it.

I’m currently sitting in the Sprint Developer Conference and don’t have my multi-monitor setup.  what I want to do is put visual studio on the left of my single screen, and the browser on the right.  After some experimenting and Googling, I figure out the following. 

If you drag an open program (by holding down the mouse on the title bar) to the edge of the screen, then let go of the mouse when you get to the edge of the screen, that program maximizes in height and the width is half the screen and it is attached (docked) to the side of the page where your mouse pointer was when you let go.

It’s always disconcerting to have a windows update fail.  I in general think of these updates as things that happen in the background that I don’t need to worry about.  Last week, I got a vague error, which after you lookup, basically says “you hand an error”.

So, I decided to give Microsoft Windows 7 support a try (which is a free service to genuine Microsoft Windows 7 Users).  I’d say things went well, though it might have been nice if the error sent me to the answer rather than a lengthy support process.

As It Happened

So, here is how things happened:

Did you know that in Windows 7, when you hover over the bottom edge of an application, you will get an arrow with both and up and a down on it.  If you double click on that arrow, the window will actually grow to fill the height of your screen!  I’ve found that you get the same arrow (but sideways) when you hover over the right or left edge of the screen, but when you double click it, nothing happens. Not sure if that’s by design or something funny with my Lenovo W520 laptop running in multi-monitor mode.

If you click back on top of the current window, it goes back to it’s original size.

Just had to share!

Recently, I posted about the new SSD drive I have for my Lenovo W520 Core-I7 smokin’ fast notebook computer (OCZ Vertex 3)  Clearly I was in the honey moon period because everything seemed blazingly fast. However, reality set in and the computer started hanging, refusing to boot all the way, have pregnant pauses, etc.  I called OCZ tech support and they suggest reload a fresh version of windows (now that’s a big help!).  I then posted to the Lenovo forums asking for advice on anything special I need to do when reloading. Instead, I got what seems to be the answer to my problem from a user by the name of “Gan” from Norway.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Need-to-Repave-my-W520-with-Windows-7-Ultimate-Use-Vanilla/td-p/439787

I finally got home from a long week of travel, did a full backup of my computer just in case the registry hack failed, and applied the registry fix discussed in the article here:  http://geekmontage.com/texts/ocz-vertex-3-freezes-locks-up-stutters-and-crashes/.

I can say, after using the computer for a few hours, I have not had one hickup.  I’m hoping it stays that way.  For anyone else who thinks they have the same problem, here are some of the issues I was having:

1. W520 would boot slowly and about 1 out of 5 times hang forever after reaching the logged in screan (wait cursor when hovering over startbar)
2. Outlook would hang in the middle of typing messages, often for more than a minute
3. Eventlog errors referring to location iaStor
4. Visual Studio 2010 would get really slow and hang
5. Many others

Here is what my current stats look like.  This is a newer version of CrystalDiskMark so it may not be comparable to the previous version I ran.

For the moment, I’m a happy camper.

Ever have a program come up and you can only see a part of and can’t move it?  That use to happen to me with Skype all the time, but I think they must have fixed it.  Just today, it happened again with ImgBurn.

So, off I go to my search engine to find the solution (which I keep forgetting).  In a post on MSDN, Dave Bishop has the perfect answer.  He says all you have to do is click on the icon of the program in the task bar, then, while holding the windows key simply press the arrow buttons to move the program where you want it.

Works perfect!  Thanks Dave.

I got this tip from the Acronis Knowledgebase which is very helpful.  Basically, you can boot off of your original windows 7 DVD, chose repair, chose a DOS prompt, then enter the two commands:

Bootrec.exe /FixMbr
Bootrec.exe /FixBoot

That’s it!  Good as new.

So, for those of you that don’t know me well, suffice it to say, I have less than no sense of direction.  I always manage to make my way home, but often with a lot of zigs and zags.  So, why should this morning be any different.  After arriving in LA around rush hour, I thought the best move would be to take the bus to Union Center (downtown LA), then the train to the convention center.  On the bus, I met a very nice Japanese woman (living in LA) who helped me get on the train in the right direction.  Having shorter legs than me, I got to the convention center first and promptly started walking in the wrong direction.  She chased me down and let me know that I was heading in the wrong direction.

Yesterday, someone asked me if I had a chance to install Windows 7 on my Lenovo W500 notebook computer.  Well, I said yet, three times.

It started when Windows 7 Beta came out.  My Vista had gotten sufficiently slow that I decided I needed to reinstall something.  Being the adventurous type, I decided to give it a go, but with a “goback” plan.  My go back plan was to install al the programs on drive C in my 2nd hard drive (in the media bay), then put all my personal data on my built in hard drive.  That way, I could easily switch back to vista by simply popping out the removable drive and putting in my vista boot drive.

I like this term I keep hearing (repaved) which means that I’ve wiped out all the information on my computer and reinstalled the operating system.  The interesting thing about the term is that there actually is a term.  As a software guy, one of the fears I have is that problems that I might create in my code will so common that they will get a name.  That is, is there anyone out there that does not know the term “Blue Screen of Death”.  If it did not happen so often, it would not have a name.

Well, somehow, yesterday when I tried to download from MSDN the latest version of Windows 7, Enterprise was showing as available.  I always pick the highest one on the list so I chose that and started to download.  It did not finish, and when I started it again, I noticed it did not show again.  Frustrated, I posted to my twitter feed that maybe Microsoft had run out.

So, if you run a notebook with different monitor configurations, you may find yourself unable to find a program you launched to a different monitor previously.  Happened to me with NotePad++ today.

So, in Vista, you would right click on the taskbar program, choose move, then use the arrow keys to bring it back.

In Windows 7, press Shift-Right Mouse Button, then choose move, then press the arrows and you are good as new.  10 minutes wasted searching, but I’m good now.

Here are some other short cuts.

So, sometimes I feel like “how did I get myself here”.  If you pushed some buttons and didn’t realize you did something, you may find your directory view looks like the following:

Well, to clear it, all you have to do is put your cursor at the very bottom of the screen (below the last line, but not in the light blue area, then press the right mouse button.  You should get this:

I’ve finally moved my Lenovo W500 over to Windows 7 RC.  What motivated me was my wireless networking was getting really really unstable.  Sometimes it would connect, other times it would not, and it never seemed to want to work at starbucks anymore.

So, here I am, and so far, vary happy.  I did try the Windows 7 beta and had some weirdness with Visual Studio 2008, but so far, everything has been perfect.  I do know the Microsoft folks have advertised that it contains better multi-monitor support.  I don’t know exactly what that means, but I have two monitors running off my Lenovo.  One is 2560×1600 and the other is 1600×1200.  One hassle I always had was moving a windows that was too big for the small monitor.  Now, I find that when I drag from the bigger to smaller, if the app is to big, it automatically get’s resized!  Nice Job MS!

I’ve been using Windows 7 now (Build 7000) for about 2 weeks and am very happy with it.  I still get some strange behavior now and again, but overall, it’s been very stable.  I much prefer it to either XP or Vista.  I do find some software I can’t easily get to work (which is no surprise), but if I really need it (like I do GoToMeeting), I usually figure out a way to make it work.

So, for GoToMeeting, if you launch it from their web site (http://www.gotomeeting.com) and simply say “Create Meeting”, you will get an error saying IE8 is not supported.  I found that if I actually downloaded the GoToMeeting application from their web site, then move the application to my start bar and set the properties to be “Run As Vista” and “Run As Administrator”, I had success.

Hopefully, this will work for you.

(Windows 7 Beta, Build 7000 put through the paces)

Background

I don’t seem to have a pile of computers laying around anymore so testing new operating systems can be a bit time consuming.  In general, I don’t like testing OS’s in VM’s because performance on the actual hardware is what I’m trying to measure.  So, luckily, I do seem to have an infinite number of SATA hard drives for my Lenovo Thinkpad W500 ( Lenovo 4062-27U ThinkPad W500 15.4" Notebook ) so I figure the best thing to do is install the OS on one of those.  Microsoft recently sent me two DVD’s (a 32bit and a 64bit).  Since I have a 64bit machine with 4gig of RAM, I figure I should test the 64bit.  So, here we go.