If the answer is yes, you will be glad to know the problem can be fixed irrespective of the disk type (dynamic or fixed).

In order to accomplish the task you require two tools for resizing and merging. VHD Resizer is a resizing tool that creates an additional partition on a virtual hard disk. Gparted is a disk utility used to merge multiple partitions.

1. Resize a Full Virtual Hard Disk

• Download VHD Resizer from http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry87.aspx
• Run VHD Resizer
  • Set the destination of the virtual hard disk
  • Disk type and
  • New Size

Figure 1: Resizing virtual hard disk using VHD Resizer

After completion of the resize load the new virtual hard disk into Virtual PC or Virtual Server and view the Disk Management console. Notice how there is an extra 9GB (difference between existing 16384 MB and the 25 GB)

Figure 2: Disk Management Console

2. Merge Disk Partitions

• Download Gparted from http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/
• Capture the Gparted iso image into the virtual machine that requires the disk partitions to be merged
  • Click on CD from the Virtual PC 2007 Console
  • Click Capture ISO Image

Figure 3: Capturing gparted iso image

• Restart the virtual machine

Figure 4: Gparted boot menu

• Select Gparted-liveCD Force VESA driver from the boot menu

• Press Enter on prompt from command line

• Press Enter on prompt from command line

Figure 5: Merge Disk Partitions

• Select the main partition using the TAB key
• Select the resize/move button
• Press enter

Figure 6: Specify size of merged disks

• Enter the new size to be equal to the maximum size i.e. 30718    
• Select the Resize/Move button
• Press Enter

Figure 7: View Merge Disk

• Select the Apply button
• Press Enter

• Select the Apply button
• Press Enter

• Select the Close button
• Press Enter

1. Using a Windows live ID log-in to the site and click on the Upload Video button on the far right of the navigation bar.

Figure 1: MSN Video Log-in and Upload

Enter the appropriate fields and click the Upload button

Figure 2: Video Upload

2. Once the video is published, select the video and on the right hand column select the embed video button

Figure 3: Select Embed Video

This will produce a embed tag as shown below

Figure 4: Copy the embedded tag

3. Then use a Content Editor Webpart in SharePoint to embed the tag provided by MSN Video. The end result should be a video as shown below.

Figure 5: Embedded Video in a Web Page

• Create template based web pages with a consistent style
• Allow non-web developers to apply content to pages

Definitions

Site Content Type:A content Type is abstraction of a content entity built using site types (Site Columns), a collection of settings and can have an associated workflow, document template and management policy. The scope of a content type is restricted to the site but can be applied within the site collection when created in the root site of the site collection.

Page Layout: A web page template that describes how an associated content type will be displayed. It lends itself to code reuse and a standardised view of a type across all its instances. Page Layouts also provide the ability to dynamic change the view and push them down to existing instances (web pages) of the page layout.

Process

1. Define the type of content that needs to be shown by creating the underlying data model (site content type) utilising Site Columns in particular Publishing Columns.
2. Create the Page Layout using SharePoint Designer
3. Style the Page using Cascading Style Sheets

Practical Example

Business Context

Note:
Sometimes it is hard to know which feature of a technology should be to accomplish a task and SharePoint holds true to this, due to the vast set of features and multiple versions.

As the Microsoft Innovation Centre Manager I work with Microsoft Partners to develop integrated solutions incorporating new wave products. This activity inevitability leads to web-based marketing of the partner solutions.

From a web content management perspective it is easy to see that each partner solution will inherently have the same underlying structure and view. For example each solution will have a solution name, name of the partner that developed the solution, contact details, description of the solution, artwork of the solution, etc.

Define and Create a Content Type

The Content Type in this example will be the partner solution page Content Type abstracting the state of the real world object ‘the solutions’ publishing/content characteristics. The partner solution page is comprised of the following types and content

Types

• Solution Name / Title (Single Line of Text)
  
• Solution Description (Publishing HTML)
  
• Solutions Poster (Publishing Image)
  
• Partner Logo (Publishing Image)
  Figure 1: Solutions Page Types Required
  

Content

• Partner Contact Details (Custom List)
  
• Solutions Documents (Document Library)
  Figure 2: Solutions Page Content
  

When creating a Content Type you must inherit from an existing site content type and in this instance as we are trying to create a publishing page of the solution, the ‘Page’ content type is best. The Page Content Type is comprised of the following types

Figure 3: Page Content Type

1. Click on Site Actions -> Click on Site Settings -> Click on Modify All Site Settings    

Figure 4: Viewing the Site Content Type Gallery Contained in the Site Settings

2. Under Galleries column Click the Site Content Types

3. Click Create from the Site Content Type Gallery

Figure 5: Creating a new Site Content Type

4. On the new Site Content Type page inherit from the Page Content Type and place it in a Page Layout Content Types

Figure 6: Creating the Solutions Page Content Type

5. Identify the differences in the inherited types (Figure 3: Page Content Type) and the required Types (Figure 1: Solutions Page Types Required)

6. Excluding the name of the inherited type and focusing on the underlying type itself the following mapping and new type (site column) creations are required.

Inherited / Created Type	Required Type
Title (Single Line of Text)	Solution Title (Single Line of Text)
Add ‘Page Content’ Type from Existing Site Columns	Solution Description (Publishing HTML)
Add ‘Page Image’ Type from Existing Site Columns	Solutions Poster (Publishing Image)
Create New ‘PartnerLogo’ Type	Partner Logo (Publishing Image)

Figure 7: Solutions Page Content Type Mapping

As only the site Title was inherited from the ‘Page’ Content type the remaining types have to be added from existing Site Columns or a new site column has to be created.

7. Firstly add the existing Site Columns. Under the newly created Solution Page Content Type click add from existing site columns

Figure 8: Adding Types (Site Columns) to Solutions Page Content Type

8. Add the Page Image and Page Content from within the Page Layout Columns

Figure 9: Adding Existing Site Column

9. Secondly create all new Site Columns. Under the newly created Solution Page Content Type click add from existing site columns

10. Create a PartnerLogo Site Column that is of type Publishing Image and place it under the Partner Solution Publishing

Figure 10: Create a new Site Column

On completion of creating new Types (Page Logo) and adding existing Types (Page Content and Page Image) the Solution Page Content Type should look as follows. Notice how the newly added types don’t have a source; it is because they are not inherited.

Figure 11: Solution Page Content Type

Create Page Layout

The first step is to create the Page Layout, using the Office SharePoint Designer 2007 (Shah & German, 2006).

11. Click File -> New -> SharePoint Content

12. In dialog box select SharePoint Publishing in the left hand pane, Page Layout in the middle pane and the appropriate content type the Page Layout should be associated with.In this example the Page Layout is associated with the Solutions PageContent Type. The newly created page layout is stored as an aspx page in the Master Pages Gallery.

Figure 12: Creating a Page Layout associated with a Solutions Page Content Type

13. Once the Page Layout is created using the <table> tag partition the page layout into 2 columns with a 65/35 split using the <td width=”35%” valign=”top”> tag

14. Simply drag and drop the appropriate fields (publishing controls) into the tables <td> tags

Figure 13: Content Type Fields

After the Page Content Type fields have been added, insert the various SharePoint content (List & Libraries) using web parts.

15. Click New Web Part Zone to create Web Part Zone Partitions within the Web Parts Pane

16.Click the Insert Selected Web Part button to add SharePoint content using web parts. In this example a Content Query Web Part was used to display a filtered (by solution) set of documents from a document Library.

17.The completed Page layout Looks as follows in SharePoint Designer

Figure 14: Solutions Page PageLayout

Style the Page Using CSS

The last step in the process is styling the Page Layout. As there is plenty of material about CSS on the Internet I will focus on CSS integrated with Web Content Management. One of the best ways to control styles using Web Content Management is in a publishing control (Spiers, 2007). By locking down the styles, content editors who create the content can easily select from a styles drop down the various styles.

18. Select the Publishing Controls (that was previously dragged onto the page layout)

19. Add the prefixstylesheet attribute to the HTML field control and set the value to ic-pub. This is the style sheet prefix name for the class.<PublishingWebControls:RichHtmlField FieldName=”PublishingPageContent” runat=”server” prefixstylesheet=”ic-pub” />

20. In the attached style sheet place the prefix style ‘ic-pub’ with a ‘Custom’ string followed by the name of the CSS class. In the example CSS only the ic-pubCustom-BodyText and ic-pubCustom-Heading will be shown in the drop down styles of the publishing control.

ic-pubCustom-BodyText

{

    font-family: “Trebuchet MS”, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;

    font-size: x-small;

    color: #666666;

}

.ic-pubCustom-Heading

{

    font-family: “Trebuchet MS”, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;

    font-size: small;

    color: #3366CC;

}    

.ic-pub-Title

{

    font-family: “Trebuchet MS”, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;

    font-size: large;

    color: #333399;

}    

.ic-pub-EditControlPadding

{

    padding: 1px 5px 5px 5px

}    

Figure 15: Innovation Centre Publishing CSS

The Styles can be selected from the edit control as the content editor is editing the text.

Figure 16: Lock down Styles in Publishing Controls

The end product that results from using Page Layouts are the following Content Pages which take less than 5 minutes to format with the content at hand.

Figure 17: Example 1 – Data #3 Online Collaboration Portal

Figure 18: Example 2 – Zap Technology Business Intelligence and Performance Management

In the example above you can notice that there is an additional video present compared to the previous content page. The use of web part zones in a page layout allows the added flexibility for the content editor to insert additional data.

Figure 19: Example 3 – Avanade Next Generation Workplace

Figure 20: Example 4 – WARDY IT Solutions Virtual DBA

Figure 21: Example 5 – Getronics Rapid Deployment eXperience

Figure 22: Example 6 – Dimension Data IPAD Connecting IP Telephony to Active Directory

Bibliography

Shah, A., & German, B. (2006). Using Web Content Management Features of MOSS 2007 to Build Great Looking Sites. Tech Ed 2006. Boston: Microsoft Corp.

Spiers, A. (2007). Tips for Developing portals with MOSS. The Alistair Speirs Blog, http://wss.alspeirs.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=17.

So getting to the point of the problem, once I realised I didn’t need Creator myDVD I uninstalled it. Upon uninstalled it actually rendered all my CD/DVD roms useless, even software based roms like Daemon tools.  They didn’t appear in My Computer.

I didn’t relaise at the time that it had happend, I only found the problem out last night.  So I went into device manager and fiddled around with uninstalling and reinstalling the devices and removing the sonic (creator mydvd) driver from the driver store (Windows\Inf\) and the Windows\System32\driver folder, to no avail.  I kept on getting the following error code.

A driver (service) for this device has been disabled. An alternate driver may be providing this functionality. (Code 32)”

Then I went and did a search on Live.com and there it was the article I need (it did take a few searches and requeries to isolate the correct key words)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060/nl

Apparently when you remove some of these CD/DVD rom tools they leave behind a registery setting that gives you an error code 32. The above article explains which registery setting needs removal.

Moral of the story, thank god for the internet and use Live.com when you need to troubleshoot.

    - Unified Communications

    - Enterprise Content Management    

    - Real Time Collaboration    

    – Enterprise Search

The NGWP solution incorporates existing and soon to be released Microsoft products (less than 6 months) to deliver a collaborative workspace environment for the new aged worker who expects a high level of collaboration and communication as standard. 

4 Pillars

The unified communications pillar highlights the convergence of communications to a single message store enabling workers to access their information anywhere using any device. 

The enterprise content management pillar shows off the ability to manage enterprise wide content through rights management policy, enabling information sharing between an increasing connected community of partners, suppliers and customers without compromising security. Another skew on enterprise content management sees people driven processes where documents are shared and worked on by multiple people who are guided by automated workflows.

Thirdly Enterprise search is used to combat the information age (where works and becoming bogged down with more and more information) by enabling workers to search multiple and distinct databases for information through a single,  effective and easy to use user interface.

Last but not least the solution tackles the problem of real-time collaboration with broad, standards based real time communications tools such as Live Meeting 2007, Round Table Camera and Office Communicator 2007.  This real time collaboration scenario enables workers to see presence and calendaring information of other colleagues, ad-hoc conferencing using webcams and 360 degree panoramic cameras.      

Aside from the two in-built features,  the toolbar really excels by being extensible.  This allows you to create your own toolbar buttons or download them from sites like http://gallery.live.com/, some of the preloaded buttons include a wikipedia, news reader, rss feed reader.

As you may or may not know Longhorn Server Beta 3 is available to the public.  One of the exciting elements of Longhorn will be the virtualisation advancements.  Virtualisation is a trend that is set to continue with the benefits of hosting multiple logical servers on a physical box, enabling reduced power consumption, sandboxing of operating systems for protection and reducing space required for server storage. 

The trend back to virtualisation and hypervisors (40 year old technology – initially used by IBM in its Model 67 System/360 Mainframes) can be attributed to improved server hardware in particular multiple core processors and virtualisation technologies by processor manufacturers Intel and AMD.

So What Do You Look For In A Processor?

When buying a processor look for the Intel VT or AMD-V capabilities this will ensure that Longhorn Server will run  Windows Server Virtualization (formerly Windows Hypervisor).  Windows Server Virtualization uses the features in Intel VT and AMD V interface to provide guest operating systems with near native performance. 

Microsoft currently has said that within 180 days of the release of Longhorn Server,  Windows Server Virtualization will be released.  The expected date for Longhorn RTM is late this year. For a beginners introduction see the Technet webcast: Understaning Windows Hypervisor and Virtualisation in Windows Codename “Longhorn”

In the process of installing the Ram and HDD I came across some interesting things in the System BIOS.

 1. I realised that the PC was EM64T enabled, which was a surprise to me, because when I bought my Dell Dimension 9150 exactly a year ago the specs came with Pentium D (830) 3.0 Ghz.  I for some reason assumed it was just a 32bit processor (due to the fact it was preloaded with 32bit OS and no indication in device manager or system info.), after reading the specs on the Intel site i have learnt all Pentium D processors are 64bit.  Prior to learnin this, I’ve been a bit annoyed that I couldn’t run Microsoft’s new server technologies (i.e Exchange 2007, Groove Server… ) as they are designed for x64 for production systems.  Well things have changed now  just finished installing Vista x64 and will be testing out Exchange on Longhorn with Groove and Sharepoint Server 2007.

2. My RAM seems to be a slower than rated.  The 4 Gb’s of ram was rated at 800 MHz, CAS 5 (I know, I know, was just too cheap to buy the really good stuff for an extra clock frequency faster on initial bit reads) and matched my FSB rating of 800 MHz.  In the System BIOS the RAM comes up as 4GB’s but with a speed of ONLY 667 MHz.  I don’t know what the reason is yet but I will try some BIOS and firmware upgrades to see if that will resolve anything.  It’s quite possibly it could be the ram itself.   

Currently I am working for Microsoft as a Technology Specialist on the intern program before I head back to Data #3.  Previous to this job I was working as a .NET programmer for Mincom on MineMarket Product – an ERP software for the mining industry.  I am also finishing of my dual degrees in B Eng(Electronics)\B I.T  at QUT (still got 6 more subjects to go).

So why the reason to start this blog?  Well I guess it was about time I started blogging about work, career development and my technical interests (Deployment, Communications & Collaboration – Vista, Exchange, Communicator and Sharepoint).