One of the annoyances I have with Team Foundation Server is it's seemingly impossible to delete Work Item Templates from your Team Project.

On the whole I have coped around this - I have a Virtual PC Image of a second TFS Installation (downloaded from Microsoft), which I use for all my TFS Tweaking, including modifying items in the process template for my real TFS server. This way, I can change, break, test on the virtual image and when the templates are ready for release, I simply upload them to my real TFS server.

However, today I made the mistake of uploading an incorrect (totally new but bogus) template to my live server. There it was, just sitting there with seemingly no way to remove it.

I did find a way however, and it's pretty sweet!
Simply download the latest release of the TFS Powertools,
Go to a command prompt and navigate to the following folder 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools\'
There you'll find a command line program called 'tfpt'. If you type 'tfpt /?', you'll get a list of commands the it can handle.
The magic one for us is 'destroywitd' which will delete the specified work item template. Be careful though - once it's deleted, you can't get it back. Best to back up first!

So, I've spent some of my weekend with my PDC build of Windows 7. I have now installed Win 7 on a second machine - a spare Dell Inspiron 9400 32 bit laptop and on the whole it's been a great experience.
On this machine, I did a brand new install and Win 7 recognised all the hardware, installing correct drivers for everything except the ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 video card, but a quick download of their beta Win 7 drivers solved that issue.

This machine is going to be used for development, particularly Microsoft Surface dev (the SDK will currently only run on a 32 bit OS, so developing on the Touchsmart for Surface is a no-no). To ease installations, I keep all the software from MSDN Subscriber downloads on my HP Mediasmart Windows Home server as .iso virtual disks. This means I don't have to hunt down CD's and DVD's for all the software I need to install, I simply use Daemon Tools to mount each virtual CD, install and move on to the next installation.

This, however was where I ran into problems....
For some reason, I have been unable to get Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120% to install sucessfully. It goes into an endless loop of 'Daemon Tools needs to reboot to install' and gets no further - even if I download the installation and run the setup as Administrator. Slightly annoying, but there are alternatives.
The first thing I tried was Microsoft's Virtual CD Control - but it's pretty buggy. Many times it would fail to mount an iso, sometimes the service wouldn't start and many other things.
In the end though, I found something that works on Windows 7 - Pismo File Mount. It's easy to install, simple and quick to use and very powerful.

If you're having problems installing the current version of Daemon tools, then give Pismo a try - I don't think you'll be disappointed!

The big question is - why isn't mounting of virtual cd's supported natively in Windows 7? If they can put native support for Virtual PC images, then support for .iso files should also be there.

Last Friday I returned home to Wisconsin after a week spent in sunny LA at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. Among the seminars I was most interested in were the ones on Multitouch in Windows 7 and Developing for Microsoft Surface.

I was especially impressed that in the Windows 7 multitouch seminar as well as the second day keynote, all the multitouch demos were done on HP Touchsmart IQ506 computers.
Brilliant! - I already have one of these (I bought it a couple of months ago specifically because I had a feeling that the PDC demos would use them - thank goodness they did!)

So, I spent Saturday (and unfortunately most of Sunday) upgrading my Touchsmart to Windows 7 and as it wasn't quite as straight forward as you might think, I figured it would be a good idea to get my notes down in my blog so they may help others who want to do it.

So, without further ado, here's how I did it. Remember that your milage may vary, and there may be easier ways to do this, but this is what worked for me. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos and I am doing this from memory so things may not be exactly as described, but the directions should get you there.

Installation Guide

Now, don't even think of doing a fresh install of Windows 7 - you'll waste a few hours like I did at first. Unfortunately, the drivers on the HP support site must check for Windows Vista specifically, so if you have your nice shiny new Windows 7 installation with no HP drivers, when you try and install them, you will get a message saying that your operating system does not meet basic requirements - even if you install with Vista compatibility turned on.

Soooo..... Upgrade of Vista is the way to go!

Firstly, make sure that you go to the HP support page and install all the latest drivers and Touchsmart application updates for Vista. Remember that once you have upgraded to Win 7, you won't be able to, so you need to do that now.

After you've done that - do yourself a massive favor and buy an external 500gb harddrive and download a trial copy of Acronis True Image Home 2009. Although this step is optional, it's best to image your existing HP Touchsmart Vista installation to a spare harddrive. That way, if the installation fails or you want to roll back to Vista later, then all you need to is either crack open the external harddrive and swap the disk with the one in your Touchsmart, or reimage it back to the Touchsmart.
It's much easier and gives you better piece of mind than relying on the HP recovery discs, which when I last tried, didn't work anyway!
I ended up buying a My Book Essentials 500gb as they are very easy to open - there's no screws, simply plastic clips in the housing and they can be opened with a couple of old credit cards.

So, by now, you've made sure your Vista installation is up to date and you have created a backup image.
Next step is to boot your Touchsmart in Vista, insert the Windows 7 64 bit DVD in the drive and choose install. Be sure to do an upgrade and not a fresh install!

Windows 7 will install in about an hour or two, depending on how much stuff you have on there. Once the install is finished and you reboot, you should have a perfectly operating machine with the exception of sound. For some reason, although the drivers are installed and supposedly working, I can't get any sound out of the Touchsmart with Windows 7. I'm continuing to look into this and if I find a fix, then I will post it here.

Once it's installed, yoou're probably thinking that you can now jump in and use all that multitouch goodness? Woah there cowboy - it ain't quite that simple! The HP driver for the touchscreen isn't the correct version that Windows 7 need for multitouch, but fortunately the manufacturer has just release a beta for you to use.
you can find it right here: http://www.nextwindow.com/windriver/index.html

Sign up on the site and download the driver. Be especially sure to read the installation documents in the zipfile BEFORE installing as there's a couple of things you need to do before installing it (disabling UAC and issuing a specific BCDEDIT command to enable the unsigned drivers to install of 64 bit Windows).

Once you have done that and installed the driver, simply reboot and you should be set to go!
To test, simply go to the desktop and do a pinch/zoom gesture (two fingers pinching together). You should see your desktop icon decrease in size. Reverse the gesture to expand.

Now, you're probably ready to go into Microsoft Paint and try some multitouch drawings with your fingers. Well, stop right there because that ain't gonna work! t seems that although Microsoft showed multitouch in Paint at the PDC, the build they gave us is an earlier one and doesn't have it

Never mind, once you've confirmed you've got multitouch working on your desktop, then you can start some Expression Blend programming against the System.Windows.Input.TouchTouchPoint API.
And that is the subject of some future articles!

Good luck with your upgrades!