During my work as a Lab Proctor at TechEd 2005 on the Gold Coast, I had a number of attendees asked me where they could get a copy of the Hands On Lab manuals. I answered that they would be on the post-conference DVDs, not knowing that these were not going to be automatically sent out to everyone.

If you attended TechEd and you wanted to get a copy of any of the Hands-On-Labs, you can now download the PDF’s from the TechEd website

Rob Caron gives us the news that there will not be an August CTP version of Team Foundation Server…

Soon, the Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite August CTP will be available for download. You need not look for a Team Foundation Server August CTP, because there isn’t one. To put it simply, the Team Suite August CTP doesn’t have a paired Team Foundation Server. The next release of Team Foundation Server will be Beta 3.

UPDATE

The file “en_vs2005_DTE_ctp_Aug2005.iso” that is listed on the MSDN SUbscribers download site as Team Foundation Server August CTP is in fact the Visual Studio 2005 Team Test Load Agent and Team Test Load Agent Controller – NOT an August CTP release as Team Foundation Server as the name implies.

Eric Lee has compiled a number of workarounds for issues in the July CTP release of Visual Studio Team System. [via Rob Caron]

The July CTP release of Visual Studio Team System is really a step foward from the Beta 2.  Performance, polish and reporting are some really big improvements.  That said, it has a few blemishes.  I’m trying to put together a VPC image of our July CTP, so I’ve had to work through a few of these issues.  As I do so, I thought I would aggregate the workarounds – provided courtesy of others – that I’ve found.

See Eric’s blog post here.

I was scanning the usual sources for an update on Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation Server over the last couple of days and I have now managed to verify a few of the rumours I had been hearing. To summarise a few of the main pieces of news;

• Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition August CTP = Now Available
  • Release Candidates (RC) of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 expected to be available for the start of PDC in Los Angeles. (Around 12th Sept)
    • Team Foundation Server Beta 3 expected to ship simultaneously with Visual Studio 2005 RTM in November timeframe. This will include a Go-Live license allowing the Beta version to be used in a Production environment.
      • Team Foundation Server due for release in the first quarter of 2006 (It will not ship as RTM with the rest of Visual Studio 2005 in November)
        • MSDN Subscribers rumoured to be able to download RTM versions of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 on or around 16th October 2005.</UL>
        [UPDATE/NEW from Rick LaPlante’s Blog]
        • The TFS RTM install will continue to use all of the data/files customers have accumulated with the go-live version of Beta 3 with no data loss. Read the complete story on Somasegar’s Blog and of course Rob Caron’s invaluable source of VSTS information.

         </p>

For those of you keen enough to download and evaluate CTP releases of the Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition products, you will be pleased to know that Microsoft have rolled out the August CTP versions for download. For those non-MSDN Subscribers out there, these are available for download on Microsoft’s public web site. (Curiously, these do not appear on the MSDN Subscribers site yet.)

Download the August CTP – Express editions from the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Prerelease Software website

I was bitten by a bug at the end of last week that appears when you try to create a new Test Project. Fortunately the VSTS Quality Tools Blog has all the answers and workarounds you need to get around this guy.

Check out the post at http://blogs.msdn.com/vstsqualitytools/archive/2005/08/09/449268.aspx

Over the years I have assemblies my fair share of computers – in excess of 300 would be my guess (I worked in a retail computer shop when I was just out of uni) and while they have advanced a LONG way during that time, they still have some rough edges I have found.

I have recently purchased a range of parts to assemble a new server for my home office. As each new CTP release of Team Foundation Server comes out, I want to be able to evaluate the changes as soon as possible and while building new virtual machines is the best way to do this, the storage and processing power to run multiple machines was starting to tax my existing hardware.

Enter the new PC.

• ASUS P5WD2–Premium motherboard
  (i955X chipset/LGA775/8Gb Memory support/Native DDR2 800 support/Dual Gbit LAN/IEEE1394/4 x SATA 3Gb/s with ICHR7 & Intel Matrix Raid/2 x Sata with Sil3132/8 x USB2/ 8–channel HD Audio)
  • Intel Pentium D 830 CPU (Dual Core with EM64 support)
    • 4Gb Corsair DDR2 RAM
      • 1 x 160Gb Seagate SATA NCQ Hard disk (System partition)
        • 4 x 200Gb Seagate SATA NCQ Hard disks in RAID5 (Data – Virtual Machines)
          • Antec P-180 case with TruePower 2.0 480W PSU
            • ATI Radeon X700 with 256Mb DDR3

              • 2 x LG GSA-4163 DVD Burners</UL> With a fairly high degree of confidence, I set to work assembling the various bits and pieces but it was a far from pain free operation. Some of the things I have learnt while doing this include;

              • PROBLEM – Even the New Dual Core CPU’s should not run in the high 70oC. This was a major annoyance given the latest design of the Antec case and the number of fan’s working to cool the system.
                FIX – A tube of Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound between the CPU and heatsink helped reduce this and I moved the two main fans off the FAN ONLY power connectors and onto normal connectors. This means the fan run full speed (and noise) rather than being controlled by the temperature. I am now getting around 40–50oC but I would like this to be a little lower.

                • PROBLEM – Their are three IDE connectors on the ASUS P5WD2–Premium motherboard. One blue one and two red ones. I connected my two LG DVD Writers onto the two red ones. The net effectof this is that when you try to install your Windows OS, even though you have hit F6 and loaded the extra drivers, you will get a BSOD as the setup tried to go into the GUI mode.
                  FIX – Plug one of the DVD-Writers into the Blue connector and leave the other DVD writer disconnected until you have installed your OS. After the OS is running and you have installed all the latest drivers, you can change the two cables back into the two red connectors. (Haven’t really found a good reason WHY this is the case)
                  • PROBLEM – Windows Server 2003 Standard reports you have 3Gb RAM NOT the 4Gb it should. The BIOS correctly reports the full 4Gb.
                    FIX – Edit the Boot.ini file and add the “/PAE” switch the the end of the Windows 2003 entry.
                    • PROBLEM – When I attempt to plug my external SATA HDD into the external SATA connector build into the back plate of the ASUS motherboard, the plug will not fit!
                      FIX – Congratulations, you have just learnt that there is a NEW SATA connector coming out which is different to the standard SATA connector. The new connector is sometimes referred to as “eSata” and will be seen much more when SATA (3.0Gb/s) starts appearing here. DAMN!! It looks like no-one in Australia sells this cable yet.
                      • PROBLEM – Moving 5 GB of files between two PC’s with 1Gb NIC’s through a Netgear GS605 Gigabit switch takes over 20 minutes!!!!
                        FIX – A work in progress…</UL> Well I can tell you that finding and resolving these so far has taken alot more time that I expected and has kept me from building the virtual machines taht I purchased the system for. Anyway, once I iron out all the issues I am sure this PC will kick some serious butt and I can’t wait to have 4 Windows 2003 Virtual Servers up and running the latest CTP of Team Foundation any day now…</p>

Microsoft has released a great new packages of 101 sample for Visual Studio 2005. Available in both VB & C#, these samples cover a wide range of topics including;

• **Base Class Libraries
  ** Eg. Using the Stopwatch class to meaure time, Using Generic Collections and Using Transactions for database and file copy operations
  • Data Access
    Eg. Using Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS) with SQL Server 2005, Performing Bulk Updates and Batch updates
    • **Web Development
      ** Eg. Using SQLCacheDependency, Using Menu and SiteMapPath controls and Using Profiles to store user properties
      • Windows Forms
        Eg. Running Asynchronous Tasks, Using Layout Panels and Creating Master/Detail forms
        • and more…</UL> The download is available from the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Developer Center here </p>

As promised the July CTP release of Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite and Team Foundation Server appeared on the MSDN Subscribers web site on Saturday (Australian time).

• Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server CTP – July 2005 (368.54Mb)
  • Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite CTP – July 2005 (3.72Gb)</UL> Lucky it got out today or it just wouldn’t have been right to call it the July CTP

  Read about some of the fantastic new changes in this CTP release on Rob Caron’s post.</p>

While the July CTP release of the Express and Professional editions of Visual Studio 2005 have been available for a couple of weeks to MSDN subscribers, the Team Suite & Team Foundation Server versions have been a little slower in being released. The good news is we should be able to start downloading them in the next couple of days.

Rob Caron reports that the VSTS July CTP is working it’s way through the system to the MSDN subscriber site now. Check out his blog entry for all the details including the readme and known issues which you can download now.