[Also see http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell/post/2013/01/22/More-on-HDD2-boot-problems-with-my-Crucial-M4-mSATA.aspx] I have just reinstalled Windows 8 (again) on my Lenovo W520. This time it was because I moved to a Crucial m4 256Gb 2.5” internal SSD as my primary disk. There is a special slot for this …

I seem to have been doing a lot of presenting lately, and the next few weeks are similarly busy. As a one-stop shop to plug them all, here is a list of upcoming events I will be presenting, co-presenting or supporting: VMUG Leeds, 25th October 2012 I am co-presenting with the marvellous Andy Fryer on a range of content …

A video has just be uploaded that I did on the new unit testing features in Visual Studio and TFS 2012. This is quick 10 minute introduction to some of the material I will be covering at DDDNorth next weekend. Hope you find it useful

For most developers the ability to drive applications with just the keyboard is as much instinctive as it is productive and Windows 8 allows it. Following on from my previous post this post covers how to navigate and use the touch interface of Windows 8 with the Keyboard The key to effective Windows 8 keyboard mastery …

Whilst setting up new a new SC-VMM based lab environment I managed to find some new ways to fail above and beyond the ones I have found before. We needed to build a new environment for testing CRM application, this needed to have its own DC, IIS server and a CRM server. The aim was to have this as a network isolated …

Obviously the most important tool is Visual Studio 2012 which is available as Express and the various wonderful SKU’s but along side these there are some great toolkits which will help your Windows 8 escapades no end. this list will be updated regularly Calisto The Calisto Toolkit developed by Tim Heuer adds helper …

I am just pushing applications through into the Windows 8 Marketplace. On checking the progress of an application it had the word “Failed”, being unfamiliar with this word I looked it up and it turns out to be some form of non success. Rushing to find out why this was the case I was presented with Your app doesn't meet …

As an out of band Windows 8 post for many of us C++ is somewhat a hidden shame, but not really a shame just hidden out of sight while we dream of closer to the metal coding. With the joys of Windows 8, C++ is once again back to the fore, I thought a couple of notes on how to get things moving might help Boostis …

In many of my presentations on Windows 8 over the last year, there has been a raft of standard questions on how to use Windows 8 effectively, so here is the first of a set of using Windows 8 posts. This aim for this post is to clarify terms and show the main Windows 8 features to allow future posts a frame of …

I started working today on a solution I had not worked on for a while. It makes use of an ASP.NET web application as a site to host SharePoint webparts (using Typemock to mock out any troublesome calls). The problem I had was that when I opened this VS2010 solution in VS2012 I could not run up this test web site. As …