Flash player under Windows Server 2008

OK,
I decided to move to the Server OS because of many reasons. I hope that I will not regret soon.
What's going on ?
Have you ever heart of Adobe Acrobat Connect (AAC) ? It is an Adobe online software designed to bring presentations and desktops to the web (a descendant of Breeze). It is Flash based (Flex may be, at least you need a flash player on the browser to participate).
So, I had to participate an online presentation hosted on AAC, and I was surprised to see the following window:You can hardly see, but in short: It says: "Adobe Acrobat Connect requires Flash Player 8.0.0.0 or newer".
The funny thing is that all that message is displayed inside a flash player, and I made this screen-shot to show you that I actually have Adobe Flash Player 10 installed.
But wait it becomes funnier. When I clicked the "GetFlash Player" button (Also a flash button!) I went to a page that showed out the next interesting screen:
Which says: Sorry, your platform is not supported.

Funny, ah ?
But I could not participated that connect meeting.

Hyper-V lives in US! (Part 2)

Earlier today I described a problem that is known to MS and has no solution yet.
In short - you can install (mean really install a working version) Hyper-V under Windows Server 2008, only if you set all locale settings to EN-US / USA Location. Every other attempt will lead to a broken installation.
I also promised that after this installation I will revert back to desired location settings to check if everything is going on well.
And the answer is ....
YES!
After installing the Hyper-V Role under EN-US Locale / USA Location forced to all system accounts also, you can safely revert back to the desired locale settings and the Hyper-V will continue working.

Tough one!

New user group in Bulgaria!

Hey!
Did you know? A brand new baby is being born here in Bulgaria. It's name is Sharepoint Usergroup Bulgaria.
I already registered there. And if you are interested in developing for/with Sharepoint, and also happen to be in the neighborhood, go for it!
The first presenter will the Sahil Malik, a MOSS MVP and INETA speaker.

Thanks to Martin Kulov who is giving so much to the local community!

Live writer on Server OS ? Help !

Have you ever tried the Windows Live Writer ?
It is really nice and handy application that helps you with posts. I used to make my posts with it. But after the upgrade to Windows Server 2008 guess what ?

---------------------------
Windows Live Installer
---------------------------
Sorry, Windows Live programs cannot be installed on Windows Server, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, or Windows operating systems earlier than Windows XP Service Pack 2.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

Why ???
So, please, if anybody has a solution to this behavior, please help!

P.S. No, I don not think that it is a solution to use a virtual machine with Windows XP just to use Live Writer. No way!

HEELP ! :)

Determining Hyper-V version

Hi again,
In my last post I informed you about the version of Hyper-V. But how to check it?
It is as simple as executing a command line in elevated command prompt:
wmic datafile where name="c:\\windows\\system32\\vmms.exe" get version
This sill give you the version. And here is also a brief list of versions:

Version	Version	Released on
Beta 1 (Windows Server 2008 Built-in)	6.0.6001.17101	December 13, 2007
Release Candidate 0	6.0.6001.18004	March 19, 2008
Release Candidate 1	6.0.6001.18010	May 21, 2008
Release to Manufacturing (RTM)	6.0.6001.18016	June 26, 2008

Thanks to this post.

Cheers,

Hyper-V lives in US ! AKA Virtual Machine Management Service entered stopped state.

Imagine you decided to upgrade to Windows 2008 Server and want to try it's new sexy Hyper-V hypervisor. Imagine also that you appear not to live in America (USA) and you set your locale settings to something different than EN-US.
Guess what!
You will never make Hyper-V running! You end up with:

Virtual Machine Management Service (vmms) failed to start.

or

Virtual Machine Management Service entered stopped state.

Period.
No additional info.
No related entries in the event log.
OK. Now what ?
You will go for:

My CPU DOES support Virtualization (double checking with manufacturer web site and BIOS settings).
I aslo made sure that the No Execution bit or DEP is set to enable from the BIOS.
I also went for latest updates from windows update.
What am I doing wrong ?

Well. The point is that you are not doing wrong. but Microsoft is doing wrong. You will google the problem, and may you will find this thread, or that post. And you will realize that you now must (you must not reinstall the Server OS!):

1. Remove (uninstall) the Hyper-V role.
2. Set locale settings to EN-US
3. Set location to USA
4. Force locale settings to be applied to all system accounts
5. Restart
6. Install the Hyper-V role
7. Restart
8. Go and create your virtual machines

Come on! Do we really need to do this ? And what if I change back the locale settings? Well I still do not know what will happen if I do this, but I am going to check in the next couple of hours or days. So stay tuned for updates!

P.S. And NO, this is not because I am with pre-release beta of HyperV. My Version is: 6.0.6001.18125 !

Cheers!