The upgrade experience for Windows 8 Enterprise is basically a reinstall, as you lose some many desktop apps and settings. So I decided to do a clean install, my PC was in need of a repave anyway. My PC has 3 disks, a bitlockered SSD for the OS, another bitlockered drive used for data and a non bitlockered drive I use for ISOs, downloads etc. Just to be on the safe side I removed the bitlocker encryption on my second drive, then I deleted the contents of my SSD and re-installed. ...

After upgrading to Windows 8.1 on my Media Center PC I have noticed a change in SkyDrive. The ‘upgrade’ process from 8 to 8.1 is really a reinstall of the OS and reapplication of Windows 8 applications. Some Windows desktop applications are removed. In the case of my Media Center PC the only desktop app installed was Windows Desktop Skydrive that I used to sync photos from my MediaPC to the cloud. This is no longer needed as Windows 8.1 exposes the Skydrive files linked to the logged in LiveID as folders under the c:user[userid]documents folder, just like Windows Desktop client used to do. ...

Updated 6th Nov 2013 - Also see this updated post , the API mentioned here maybe an issue, but the rights change in this other post is probably the real issue After upgrading a test server from TFS 2012 to 2013 I started getting the following exception when trying to set the retention for a build policy via the TFS API “TF215106: Access denied. TYPHOONTFS\TFSService needs Update build information permissions for build definition ClassLibrary1.Main.Manual in team project Scrum to perform the action. For more information, contact the Team Foundation Server administrator.”} ...

I am getting sick of the fact that the Samsung 500T tablet running Windows 8.1 I am installing applications on keeps going into sleep mode to save power. I start the install, leave it to run, look back later it has been saving power, started and stopped Wifi and I have one very confused install. It is not as if it is anything weird, just Office 2013. So the the workaround (as I admit I forgot to pickup it’s PSU this morning) is pop it into Presenter Mode (via the Windows key X and Mobility Center). This means it ignore Power saving and just runs for me. Install finish fine and I am good to go ...

I recently tried to get the free HP ALM Synchronizer to link to Microsoft’s TF Service, the summary is it does not work. However, it took me a while to realise this. The HP ALM Synchronizer was designed for TFS 2008/2010 so the first issue you hit is that TF Services is today basically TFS 2013 (and is a moving goal post as it is updated so often). This means when you try to configure the TFS connection in HP ALM Synchronizer it fails because it cannot see any TFS client it supports. This is fairly simple to address, just install Visual Studio Team Explorer 2010 and patch it up to date so that it can connect to TF Service (you could go back to the 2008 and achieve the same if you really needed to) ...

Just done the update of my Windows 8 Media Center to 8.1. First issue was I looked in the store and could not see the update. I was looking for an ‘update’ in the top right not a huge application entry in the middle of the screen. Strange how you can miss the obvious The download took about 30 minutes which worked in background whilst I was using Media Center. It then did a reboot, the main install of files took about 30 minutes too. It seemed to sit at 85% for a long time, then another reboot. A few ‘preparing devices’ messages and ‘getting ready’ for a good 10 minutes, then ‘Applying PC settings’, another reboot then ‘setting up a few more things’ . I then had to accept some licenses, and login with a LiveID, and eventually it started, and everything was working. ...

I have been changing the mocking framework used on a project I am planning to open source. Previously it had been using Typemock to mock out items in the TFS API. This had been working well but used features of the toolset that are only available on the licensed product (not the free version). As I don’t like to publish tests people cannot run I thought it best to swap to Microsoft Fakes as there is a better chance any user will have a version of Visual Studio that provides this toolset. ...

Thanks to everyone who came to my DDDNorth session ‘Automated Build Is Not The End Of The Story’, the links to the tools I discussed are as follows Visual Studio Lab Management MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997438.aspx ALM Rangers best practice guidance http://vsarlabman.codeplex.com/ Building Environments SC-VMM http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610610.aspx ALM Rangers VM Factory http://vsarvmfactory.codeplex.com/ Chef http://www.opscode.com/chef/ Puppet http://puppetlabs.com/ Deployment ALM Rangers Test Infrastructure Guidance http://tig.codeplex.com/ ALM Rangers DevOps Workbench Express Edition http://vsardevops.codeplex.com/releases/view/111294 Octopus Deploy http://octopusdeploy.com/ Buildmaster http://inedo.com/buildmaster/overview InRelease http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/inrelease/

Whilst upgrading a TFS 2010 server to 2012 I had a problem that a build was showing in the queue as active after the upgrade. This build was queued in January, 10 months ago, so should have finished a long long time ago. This build had the effect that it blocked any newly queued builds, but the old build did not appear to be running on any agent – a zombie build. ...

I have previously posted about when TFS build controllers don’t start properly. Well I saw the same problem today whilst upgrading a TFS 2010 server to TFS 2012.3. The client did not want to immediately upgrade their build processes and decided to keep their 2010 build VMs just pointing them at the updated server (remember TFS 2012.2 and later servers can support either 2012 or 2010 build controllers). The problem was that when we restarted the build service the controller and agents appeared to start, but then we got a burst of errors in the event log and we saw the controller say it was ready, but have the stopped icon. ...