Microsoft

I am The Naked Geek. The Acronym is TNG. This page is my other alter-ego personna, where I spend up to 12 hours each working day. TNG works for Avanade. Avanade was formed in April 2000 through a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft.

My resume will be available shortly but the names of the project and clients will be withheld.

This page is for the sole purpose of commentary and analysis of Microsoft technologies through the eyes of a consultant who gets to work with the best people in the industry, using the best practices available and with the bleeding edge technology at our disposal.

Dual Booting Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 from VHD
Recently, I have a chance to roll onto an Avanade project where most of our Avanade's resources were concentrated on. At the client site, all vendors must join to their Active Directory domain before they are allowed to access any other resources with resides on the customer's network.

In addition to the client requirements, I was seeking out another solution which will enable me to dual boot with Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows Server 2008. In fact, it will be sweeter if I can do a triple boot with Mac OS X as well.

With a Western Digital Scorpio Black 7200RPM 16MB 500GB hard disk drive for S$99 at Sim Lim Square, I embarked on a journey of discovery.

Microsoft

The following steps are performed:

Step 1a: Prepare the Disk
Insert the Windows 7 install disk into the disk drive.
When the Windows Install screen is loaded, press Shift+F10 to enter command prompt

select disk 0

create part pri

format fs=ntfs quick

list vol

assign

Step 1b: Install Windows 7 Enterprise

create vdisk file=c:\windows7.vhd maximum= 184320 type=expandable
select vdisk file=c:\windows7.vhd
attach vdisk
create part pri
format fs=ntfs quick
list vol
assign vol
asssign letter=v
exit
Continue with the OS install, ignore the warning errors that is associated with choosing the .vhd.
After the OS install is completed and allowed to reboot, shut down the machine.

Here is a screenshot of the disk drives after the installation of Windows 7. The C Drive is the system drive while the D: Drive contains the windows7.vhd file.

Step 2: Install Windows Server 2008 R2
Insert the Windows Server 2008 R2 install disk into the disk drive.

When the Windows Install screen is loaded, press Shift+F10 to enter command prompt

Repeat the same steps in Step 1b with different parameters.


Tags

This technology has been out for a while. I thought its worth a mention. Tags. Microsoft has something to call their own. Not surprisingly, they are named Microsoft Tags. You can create up to 10 tags free of charge.
Tags can be read by many smartphone applications, including the Apple iPhone.

You can create tags from http://tag.microsoft.com/.

Once a tag is created, you can download the tag in various formats and use them on namecards, posters, brochures/pamphlets, advertisements, e.t.c.

Here is an example. Use a Microsoft Tag Reader application and scan this picture. It will direct your mobile phone internet browser to the home page for The Tan Family.