Configuring the Send To and Open With... menus in Windows 7/Windows 8

If you are like me, you probably like to customize your use of Windows especially such things that make it easier for you to open Files with specific Applications.

Of course, the best way to do this is to customize both the Send To and the Open With menus.

Here are 2 very good articles that describe how to perform these operations respectively:

Send To menu:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/customize-the-windows-vista-send-to-menu/

Open With menu:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/take-control-of-your-windows-7-open-with-menus/5551/

Installing PreEmptive Analytics for Team Foundation Server 2013

If you are not familiar with PreEmptive Analytics Community Edition, it is a new feature included since Team Foundation Server 2012 which allows a company/organization to track the Exceptions that occur from when customer are running their particular application.  PreEmptive is the same company that also includes Dotfuscator Community Edition with each version of Visual Studio that allows obfuscation of .NET Assemblies.

This is particularly useful as part of the overall ALM strategy since it allows development companies to track down the bugs/defects in their product that occur while organizations are using their products on a daily basis!

Below are screenshots on how to install and configure PreEmptive Analytics on your Team Foundation Server:

 

Upgrading from Team Foundation Server 2012 to Team Foundation Server 2013

Unlike the upgrade from Team Foundation Server 2010, the upgrade from Team Foundation Server 2012 can be done directly without uninstalling Team Foundation Server 2012.

However, due to system requirements for Team Foundation Server 2013, you will still need to upgrade your SQL Server instance from SQL Server 2008 R2 to SQL Server 2012 SP1 (if it is not already running SQL Server 2012 SP1). 

Once you have upgraded your SQL Server instance, you can proceed with the standard TFS Upgrade process:

 

 

Internet Explorer 10 requirement for Visual Studio 2013

I have been recently installing Visual Studio 2013 on several of my development virtual machines that are all running Windows 8/Windows Server 2012.

However, I needed to work on a virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 R2 for some TFS (Team Foundation Server) development and while attempting to install Visual Studio 2013 on this machine, I received the following error message:

Well, this was very interesting indeed!  In fact, I don't ever remember any prior version of Visual Studio requiring any particular version of Internet Explorer to be installed in the past, but apparently this is a new requirement with Visual Studio 2013!

In any case, I was forced to upgrade my installation of Internet Explorer 9 to Internet Explorer 10 in order to be able to install Visual Studio 2013 on this particular virtual machine.

But for those of you who still have a requirement for IE 9 on your system, you may have to continue living with either Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012 for the time being!!

Microsoft Fakes now included with Visual Studio 2013 Premium Edition!

If you are familiar with the Fakes Framework that was previously introduced with Visual Studio 2012, you may already know that it was exclusively available to other development teams entitled to Visual Studio Ultimate Edition.
Unfortunately, those development teams that were entitled to Visual Studio Ultimate Edition were a rare and elite group indeed.
In fact, most Microsoft Partner companies/organizations are only entitled to Visual Studio Premium Edition, therefore, a mocking framework such as the Fakes Framework would be completely unavailable to potentially millions of developers.
Fortunately, with the release of Visual Studio 2013, Microsoft has changed their tune in regards to the availability of the Fakes Framework.  It is now available with even the Premium Edition of Visual Studio!  Yippee!!
Here is a feature comparison available across all of the various Visual Studio 2013 editions:
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/products/compare

Below is the feature comparison for Visual Studio 2012  (where Fakes was notably absent in Premium edition):

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/compare


It is good to know that Microsoft is listening to the feedback from the development community and subsequently making these requested changes to their feature sets in Visual Studio.

Uninstalling the Windows ADK

 

As most of you probably know, the Windows ADK includes Windows System Image Manager that can be used for creating Unattended installation files for various versions of Windows.

Of course, now that Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 were recently released, I needed a newer version of the Windows ADK.

Unfortunately, when I attempted to launch the installation of the newer Windows ADK Setup, I was prompted with a dialog indicating that I would need to uninstall the previous version of the Windows ADK.  I actually expected that the newer version of the Windows ADK would automatically uninstall the older version of the ADK, but that is Microsoft for you.  You can never guess how one product installation will behave compared to another.

Therefore, I went into the Windows Control Panel to attempt to look for an uninstall option for the Windows ADK, but, as luck would have it, there was no such option!

Fortunately, I found an article that described how to uninstall the Windows ADK.  The solution is extremely simple:

At the Run command or a Command Prompt (you may need to Run As Administrator), enter the following command:

adksetup.exe /uninstall

After I ran that command, I was able to successfully uninstall the older version of the Windows ADK and eventually install the newer version of the Windows ADK for Windows 8.1/Windows Server 2012 R2. 

Hooray!

Upgrading from Team Foundation Server 2010 to Team Foundation Server 2013

Now that Team Foundation Server 2013 has RTM’ed, I decided to try and upgrade my Team Foundation Server 2010 environment to Team Foundation Server 2013.
After reviewing the System Requirements for Team Foundation Server 2013, I noticed the following things:

1. I would not be able to do an in-place upgrade to Team Foundation Server 2010.  I would have to uninstall Team Foundation Server 2010 from my Application Tier and then install Team Foundation Server 2013.  I would have to repeat this process of uninstalling and re-installing on my Build Service server as well.
2. Team Foundation Server 2013 requires SQL Server 2012 SP1 and above, however, my SQL Server data tier was running SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2.  Therefore, I would have to first upgrade my SQL Server to SQL 2012 SP1 before completing the installation of Team Foundation Server 2013 on my Application Tier.
3. Though I did not know this earlier, I also had to install SQL Server 2012 Client Tools on my TFS 2013 Application Tier as well in order to allow TFS to connect to my SQL Server instances for Reporting Services and Analysis Services.
4. Even though the documentation does not seem to be updated, this compatibility update for Visual Studio 2010 that allows connectivity to Team Foundation Server 2012 also seems to work for Team Foundation Server 2013: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29082.  Here are the details regarding this particular update:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2662296

These are the steps that I followed to complete my upgrade from TFS 2010 to TFS 2013:

1. Un-installed TFS 2010 from my Application Tier and my Build Service Tier
2. I upgraded my installation of SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 to SQL Server 2012 SP1.  While upgrading my installation of SQL Server 2012 SP1, I allowed it to simply include the GDR update as part of the installation so that I was sure that my SQL Server 2012 installation was fully up-to-date and would therefore be compliant with my installation of TFS 2013.
3. Installed SQL Server 2012 SP1 Client Tools on my TFS Application Tier.
4. Installed TFS 2013 on my TFS Application Tier and Build Service Tier.
5. Performed the TFS 2013 Upgrade on my TFS Application Tier and Build Service Tier.
6. Installed the Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Compatibility Update for TFS 2012 on my client workstations.
7. Verified that I could connect to my newly upgraded TFS 2013 instance using Visual Studio 2010 SP1!

Below are the screenshots from running the Upgrade Wizard for the TFS Application Tier:

After upgrading the TFS Application Tier, I proceeded to upgrade my Build Service Tier: