ha10

No third party software needed any more.  Win7 can mount a VHD as if it was a USB drive for modification, etc.

Right Click on Disk Managment and select Attach VHD.  Navigate to the image.  It is now mounted as if it was a USB drive.

It even offers support to boot from the VHD!  Teh Awesome.

See an in-depth how-to, here.

OK, I tried to be a true beta tester and send some feedback to Microsoft.  I clicked on one of the Send Feedback links.  It asks you to login with your Windows Live ID.  To my surprise, my Windows Live ID is not allowed to send feedback.  Fine bee that way.  Now make those links go buh-bye.

From Tech-Recipes:

Start > RegEdit > HKKEY_CURRENT_USER > Control Panel > Desktop > FeedBackToolEnabled > Change REG key to 0 > Restart.

I cannot live without CRM at work.  To be able to run Windows 7, I had to work out a few kinks to get CRM for Outlook to work properly.

To get CRM for Outlook to work, it needs to be able to pop open IE windows on the fly.  By default, you are able to get the windows to open, however, they are blank.  An error may appear that says you need to disable your pop-up blocker.  This does not work.  Adding your CRM URL to the trusted sites, also does not work.

I had to cripple IE to get it running.  Open Internet Options, then go to the Security tab.

Uncheck: Enable Protected Mode for the Internet Zone

Restart IE and Outlook.

CRM 4.0 for Outlook now works normally.

I hope that the RTM of Windows 7 will allow you to add your CRM URL to the Trusted Sites so you can enable IE’s Protected Mode and have CRM for Outlook still work.  Not that I will ever use it, but still.  It would be nice.

I have been running Windows 7 now for two full days.  So far no BSOD.  Impressive how Microsoft has finally released a Beta that is usable.  Thank you…

Here are some of my first impressions while getting up and running on Win7:

• The install took about 20 minutes before I was able to start getting updates and putting it on the domain.
• Windows 7 had a driver for everything in my Latitude D630.  Even had an updated driver for a few things via Windows Update.
• I expected this: Office 2007 installs perfectly and quickly.
• Our company lives off of CRM.  Each client runs CRM for Outlook, which is a monster in itself.  To get CRM 4.0 for Outlook to function, you have to cripple IE.  Turn off IE’s Protected Mode to allow content to load in the IE pop-up windows from Outlook.
• 
• 2003 Admin Tools installed flawlessly.  I cannot live without these.  My custom RDC MMC works great.  This would be a deal breaker for me.
• Trend Micro is not ready for Windows 7.  I did not expect that it was.  Installed it on a test VM first, resulting in a BSOD every 2 min or so.  I am currently running ClamWin 0.94.1 (big fan, BTW) without issue.  The Windows Action Center does not recognize it as virus software, so I had to turn off messages reminding me I had no virus software running.
• Performance is good, I do not notice any slower speed than when I was running Vista.  Boot-up time is great!  30 seconds to log-in screen.
• When replying to an email in Outlook 2007, the aero title bar has a bug.  I loose the minimize, maximize and close buttons.  This seems to be the only place it happens.
• Live window preview from taskbar!  Video is actually watchable!  Nice touch!

My Wish List:

• The new task bar is cool.  Reminds me of an OSX dock.  What would be nice is if there was a way to know weather a program is running or not.  OSX puts a little triangle below the icon to show that the program is running.  There really is no way to determine if it is running or not.
• A built in keyboard shortcut for the Snipping It tool.  I fixed it by creating my own, but a quick and easy say, Windows Key + S would be sweet.

Here, you will like this Windows 7 comic from xkcd