Installing Windows 8.1 to a Samsung Series 7 Slate

Note: I already had the latest firmware version installed. If you haven't upgraded your firmware, do so before installing Windows 8 or 8.1 RTM. For the //Build tablets this is firmware version 05WJ. If you don't your tablet will be unable to start after the installation of the RTM bits. 

Samsung strongly urges retail slate users to also update to the latest firmware version before installing Windows 8. Also note that Samsung will not provide support for a slate that was originally installed with Windows 7. Why I do not know, I don't like it either.

I recently sold my Samsung 7 slate, but not before upgrading it to Windows 8.1. The easiest way is to just download the ISO equivalent to your Windows 8 installation (Pro or Enterprise) and performing an in-place upgrade, but the process to install cleanly hasn't changed much since Windows 8:

• Make a backup of your content (Skydrive comes to mind)
• Format a bootable USB key of 4GB. I used Fat32
• Download the Windows 8.1 iso, or insert the disk into your machine
• Copy the contents of the iso file to the empty usb disk (some slates can even boot by copying the iso file to the usb key as is). 
• Now you have a usb installation key for Windows 8.1. Put it in the slate's usb port.

Depending on whether you have the //Build Developer Device or a retail Samsung 7 Slate, the next steps differs:

//Build	Retail
Restart your slate while holding [vol-up+vol-down]  Disable CSM and Safe Boot in the bios. Navigate, change value: vol-up, vol-down Enter sub menu: Rotate lock Confirm selection: Rotate lock Cancel: vol-up+vol-down Save the changes and restart the slate again while holding  [vol-up+vol-down]. Choose Boot from USB	Restart your slate while holding [pwr+winkey] Enable UEFI, Legacy USB Navigate on page, change value: vol-up, vol-down. Enter sub menu: Rotate Lock Confirm Selection: Rotate Lock Navigate between pages: Rotate lock + vol-up/down Cancel: Winkey Save changes and reboot. Hold winkey+pwr Go to the last tab and choose to boot from the usb key you have connected to the slate.

This should start the installation process for Windows 8.1. 

• In the drive selection screen click advanced and delete all the partitions of the slate.
• Choose to create a new partition. I opted for one big one.
• Setup will also create an Emergency Partition and some other partition used for the boot loader and BitLocker, this is normal..
• Next, next, finish, reboot reboot reboot.

Ok, so now you're in Windows. In my case all drivers loaded themselves. While the touch drivers are updated, your slate may act weird. Wait for the driver installation to happen silently in the background. Touch should return to normal function automagically.

When I tried to activate it said "DNS not found". And I couldn't find any place to enter my key (I installed Windows 8.1 Enterprise, this is easier with  Pro). So I entered it from an Administrative command line (ctrl-shift-enter in the start menu, or slide tile down and start it as administrator from the options bar).

slmgr.vbs -ipk insert-your-product-key-here
slmgr.vbs -ato

After activation a couple of drivers were updated. Nothing fancy.

Most drivers are detected automatically. Some can be installed with drivers from the original manufacturer for a newer version.

So far I've added the following additional device drivers to the system:

• Mouse and Keyboard Device Center (for my excellent Microsoft Touch mouse)
• Intel HD Graphics drivers for Windows 8
• Realtek drivers for the Ethernet port on the Dock (Win8 and Win8.1 Auto Installation Program (SID:1624014))
• Intel Chipset drivers
• Intel Rapid Storage drivers
• ST Micro Rotation sensor driver, version 1.7.12 or newer (very hard to find), I found it on the Acer Support Site some time ago, but cannot find the download link.
• GPS Sensor Driver (only available if your slate has a 3G module)
• Wacom pen tablet drivers
• Xbox 360 wireless receiver

Note: Intel releases new drivers regularly. I've stopped updating the above list of links. To check whether you have the latest driver versions, visit the Intel Driver Update Utility page.

Then make sure you've backed up your Bitlocker recovery keys if you use the bitlocker security feature.

There is a firmware upgrade for the Touch sensors available which reduces tap-and-hold issues and generally improves the touch experience.

Resolving test run issues in Visual Studio "Some or all identity references could not be translated"

One of my devs ran into a strange bug in the Visual Studio test runner today. It manifests itself in the fact that tests won't run and you'll find the following error message in the Output\Test window:

------ Run test started ------
Some or all identity references could not be translated.
Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object.
========== Run test finished: 0 run (0:00:00,2280287) ==========

It only occurs when your project contains a Web Application which is configured to be hosted in IIS it seems.

Red-Gate releases Reflector .NET 8.3

And they finally integrated the Analyzer feature into Visual Studio. Now you can find out where a specific call is bing used, right from your editor. I find this feature immensely handy when trying to figure our how to use a certain feature. This is especially handy when you're working with scarcely documented libraries like parts of the TFS Client Object Model. Find code in TFS Web Access that's using the same API to find out how you're supposed to call it.

More information can be found on the Red-Gate Reflector .NET 8.3 Release blog.

Resharper 8.1 goes gold & Resharper CLI

For those of you who are using Resharper, version 8.1 was just released with Typescript support and better integration with Visual Studio 2013. The full release blog can be found here.

With Resharper 8.1 also ships an updated version of the Resharper Commandline Interface. This allows you to integrate Resharper in your build process. 8.1 introduces support for multiple configurations/cpus for your projects, but still requires the full context of a solution to execute.

Check out this older post to integrate Resharper CLI with Team Build 2012 (and 2010 probably). That way you can get the same warnings and errors in the IDE as in your Continuous Integration build. The Build workflow for 2013 has changed considerably and requires its own Custom Activity to execute. Judging by the Resharper ticket system, this is coming in a future release, but I might roll my own in the mean time.

Upgrade your existing ASP.NET MVC4 application to MVC5

To upgrade your existing MVC 4 application to MVC 5 you need to go through a number of steps to replace the references and patch the web.config. These steps are clearly explained in the original post, but when you're done you'll initially loose the handy context menu items to add controllers and views. You must take a few additional steps to complete the process.

After walking through all the steps mentioned, make sure your project has the following ProjectTypeGuids:

<projecttypeguids>
     {349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}
</projecttypeguids>

Now, if you want to keep using Visual Studio 2012, you'll loose the "Add View" and "Add Controller" context menu options, they'll be working just fine in Visual Studio 2013 which coomes with MVC5 support built-in. To get them back in Visual Studio 2012 you need to install the following items:

1. Visual Studio 2012 Update 4
2. Web Tools 2013.1 for Visual Studio 2012 (Web Platform Installer | Direct Download)

To check what other cool features you'll gain by upgrading, check out the release post.

Source: StackOverflow

Enabling Mighty Moose for Visual Studio 2013

Warning: This is probably totally unsupported, and might come with its own class of issues, but so far it seems to work...

To enable Mighty Moose in Visual Studio 2013 do the following steps:

1. Install Mighty Moose
2. Create a 2013 Addin file
1. Copy the C:\Program Files (x86)\ContinuousTests\AutoTest.VS.2012.Addin to C:\Program Files (x86)\ContinuousTests\AutoTest.VS.2013.Addin
2. Edit the 2013 file and update the version numbers from 11.0 to 12.0
3. Or drop the following file: AutoTest.VS.2013.Addin in your  MightyMoose installation folder.
4. In Visual Studio open the Tools - Options - Environment - Add-in Security page and add C:\Program Files (x86)\ContinuousTests to the list of trusted add-in paths.
5. Restart Visual Studio

This seems to do the trick for me. Not sure if there are any issues with this, as I haven't played around with it too much. I had Visual Studio 2010, 2012 and 2013 installed side-by-side, so I didn't have to trick the installer into believing that there is a suitable version of Visual Studio anywhere.

See also: StackOverflow.

ALM Rangers ship the TFS Reporting guidance books and samples v1

It has taken a lot of people a long time to work on an extensive guide on extending the TFS reporting capabilities and getting some report data out of the Team Foundation Service. Grab your copy while it's hot!