Cannot run coded ui test on a TFS lab due to lack of rights to the drops folder

Whilst setting up a TFS 2012 Lab management environment for Coded UI testing we got the problem that none of the tests were running, in fact we could see no tests were even being passed to the agent in the lab On the build report I clicked on the ‘View Test Results’ which loaded the result in Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) and viewed the test run log, and we saw ...

November 9, 2012 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Using IISExpress for addresses other than localhost

I recently had the need to use IISExpress on Windows 8 to provide a demo server to a number of Surface RT clients. I found this took me longer than I expected. It might be me but the documentation did not leap out. So as a summary this is what I had to do, let us say for example that I want to serve out http://mypc:1234 Make sure you have a project MyWebProject in Visual Studio that works for http://localhost:1234 using IISExpress Open the TCP port 1234 on the PC in the Control Panel > Admin Tools > Firewall Edit C:Users[current user]DocumentsIISExpressconfigapplicationhost.config and find the site name section for your Visual Studio project. And change the to . This means IISexpress can now listen on this port for any IP address You finally need to run IISExpress with administrative privileges. I did this by opening a PowerShell prompt with administrative privileges and running the command C:Program FilesIIS Expressiisexpress.exe /site:MyWebProject Once all this was done my client PCs could connect ...

November 6, 2012 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Reinstalling again…

Just completing the second reinstall of Windows 8 on my Lenovo W520 in 10 days due to my new SSD failing and needing to be replaced. To try to ease the process I though I would try putting on the miscellaneous tools I use such as 7Zip, Filezilla etc. using Chocolatey. I have to say first impressions are good, one command and the product is on, the files pulled from the appropriate site. Obviously there is the issue that packages are may not be kept up to date, unlike Nuget (which is at Chocolatey’s core) the packages are not stored on the Chocolatey site. I noticed the SysInternal package is a bit behind, but I could always submit the updated package myself couldn’t I. ...

November 2, 2012 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Team Foundation Service RTMs

Today at Build 2012 it was announced that https://tfspreview.com has RTM’d as Team Foundation Service on https://tfs.visualstudio.com. Up until now there has been no pricing information, which had been a barrier to some people I have spoken to as they did not want to started using something without knowing the future cost. So to the really good news, as of now It is free for up to 5 users If you have an active MSDN subscription it is also free. So a team of any size can use it as long as they all have MSDN The announcement said to look out for further price options next year. ...

October 31, 2012 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

403 and 413 errors when publishing to a local Nuget Server

We have an internal Nuget Server we use to manage our software packages. As part of our upgrade to TFS2012 this needed to be moved to a new server VM and I took the chance to upgrade it from 1.7 to 2.1. The problem Now we had had a problem that we could publish to the server via a file copy to its underlying Packages folder (a UNC share) but could never publish using the Nuget command e.g. ...

October 31, 2012 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Nice introduction to the new features of VS2012

If you are looking for a nice introduction to the new features of Visual Studio 2012, I can heartily recommend Richard Banks ‘Visual Studio 2012 Cookbook’. This book covers a wide range of subjects including the IDE, .NET 4.5 features, Windows 8 development, Web development, C++, debugging, async and TFS 2012. This is all done in a easy to read format that will get you going with the key concepts, providing sample and links to further reading. A great starting off point. ...

October 30, 2012 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Problems re-publishing an Access site to SharePoint 2010

After applying SP1 to a SharePoint 2010 farm we found we were unable to run any macros in an Access Services site, it gave a –4002 error. We had seen this error in the past, but the solutions that worked then did not help. As this site was critical, as a workaround, we moved the site to a non-patched SP2010 instance. This was done via a quick site collection backup and restore process. This allowed us to dig into the problem at our leisure. ...

October 25, 2012 · 3 min · Richard Fennell

Moving to an SSD on Lenovo W520

[Also see http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell/post/2013/01/22/More-on-HDD2-boot-problems-with-my-Crucial-M4-mSATA.aspx] I have just reinstalled Windows 8 (again) on my Lenovo W520. This time it was because I moved to a Crucial m4 256Gb 2.5” internal SSD as my primary disk. There is a special slot for this type of drive under the keyboard, so I could also keep my 750Gb Hybrid SATA drive to be used for storing virtual machines. I had initially planned to backup/restore my previous installation using IMAGEX as I had all I needed in my PC, but after two days of fiddling I had got nowhere, the problems being ...

October 23, 2012 · 3 min · Richard Fennell

New video on unit testing in VS2012 and TFS

A video has just be uploaded that I did on the new unit testing features in Visual Studio and TFS 2012. This is quick 10 minute introduction to some of the material I will be covering at DDDNorth next weekend. Hope you find it useful

October 8, 2012 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

More fun with creating TFS 2012 SC-VMM environments

Whilst setting up new a new SC-VMM based lab environment I managed to find some new ways to fail above and beyond the ones I have found before. We needed to build a new environment for testing CRM application, this needed to have its own DC, IIS server and a CRM server. The aim was to have this as a network isolated environment, but you have to build it first as the various VMs. ...

October 5, 2012 · 4 min · Richard Fennell