The day I’ll be in attendance for will be “Deploying and Managing the Modern Desktop” which will include additional subjects including virtualisation.

Desktop technology has marched on: user needs and expectations are changing; the Internet is a different place to 10 years ago and we haven’t even mentioned virtualisation!

You need to think about your desktop and the infrastructure behind it. You need a modern desktop to easily take advantage of all of these technologies, and to enable your people to be productive long into the future. In this demo-filled day, we will look at how to weave technologies like Windows 7, Office 2010, the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack (MDOP), and desktop virtualisation technologies into a coherent sustainable, cost-reducing desktop strategy.

I’ll also be feeding back to you the days events and the news that comes from it.  It’ll certainly be interesting to be on the other side.  I have to admit I’ve not actually been to a Microsoft events before so for my first one to be at their request to help answer questions from IT Pros is quite a personal thrill and a great acknowledgement of the work done by all my colleagues here at gHacks.

For those of you in or near London don’t forget my Geek Meet where there will be staff from Microsoft present and I’ll have signed copies of my Windows 7 Troubleshooting book and a fantastic Windows 7 Tablet, courtesy of ExoPC, to give away.  This social event is open to everyone though you’ll need to enter our competition to be in with a chance of winning the tablet.

For all of you Tech Pros in the UK I’ll be hosting some “Ask the Expert” sessions at Microsoft’s upcoming “Deploying and Managing the Modern Desktop” Tech.Day event in London (23rd May) at the request of Microsoft UK. You don’t get that from other tech websites!

Desktop technology has marched on: user needs and expectations are changing; the Internet is a different place to 10 years ago and we haven’t even mentioned virtualisation!

You need to think about your desktop and the infrastructure behind it. You need a modern desktop to easily take advantage of all of these technologies, and to enable your people to be productive long into the future. In this demo-filled day, we will look at how to weave technologies like Windows 7, Office 2010, the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack (MDOP), and desktop virtualisation technologies into a coherent sustainable, cost-reducing desktop strategy.

The day is split into four sessions. Modern Desktop, Deployment, Virtualisation and then a final session on Windows Server and Office 365. In addition there will be information on subjects including migrating from IE6 and application compatibility as well as introductions to some new Microsoft technologies including Lync, Office 365 and Windows InTune.

I’ll be in each session and available during intervals to answer questions from delegates on desktop, deployment and virtualisation and, of course, Troubleshooting!

I’ll be taking my camera too and grabbing people from Microsoft and other major players in the tech industry to ask them about all manner of subjects, and I’ll post all that back here next week. It should be an eciting day with a great deal to see and interesting people to meet.

Win a Tablet PC + Free Books!

What’s more the social event of Microsoft’s whole UK Tech.Days week will be our Geek Meet (Sun 22nd May, 8pm) which will be held this coming Sunday at the Bavarian Beerhouse in Tower Hill at 8pm. It’s open to everyone, people from Microsoft will be there to answer your questions and share a drink. What’s more we’ll be giving away £600 of tablet PC, courtesy of Exo PC. It’s very easy to win too, and I’ll also have a big stack of signed copies of my book to give away.

If you’re already booked to attend the Techdays then feel free to come and give me a poke on the day but if not and you’re anywhere near London then get yourself along to the Geek Meet. I’ll be the guy in the gHacks t-shirt doing some very social networking :)

On the night you will need to bring along a printout (or smartphone) showing you’ve subscribed for your chance to enter and win.

The show will be broadcast nationwide in the USA on the Business Talk Radio and Lifestyle Talk Radio networks and starts at 7pm PT / 10pm ET / 3am GMT: guess which of the three time zones Mike will be in  :P

Mike will be talking about his new Microsoft Press book Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out as well as taking calls from listeners about PC and Windows 7 issues, and here’s a heads up for you!  Every caller Mike speaks to will get a free copy of his eBook. 

You can listen live online here and the podcast will be available in a day or two here.

Each winner will receive a copy of the book in paperback and the runners up each receive a copy of the eBook.  On top of this, every winner and runner up also receives a copy of Mike’s Windows 7 Power Users Guide as an eBook.

The Winners!

Brian Carpenter (Oklahoma) who wrote…

iPhone won’t sync in Windows 7, particularly 64-bit Windows 7 systems, based around the P55 chipset. The iPhone is usually (though not
always) recognized, but iTunes then complains that it can’t connect to the unit because of an “unknown error”, usually (though again, not
always) 0xE8000065.

Disabling USB power management appears to be one solution. Click Start, type DEVMGMT.MSC and press [Enter] to launch Device Manager,
then click View > Devices By Type. Expand the Universal Serial Bus controllers section of the tree, right-click each USB Root Hub entry
in turn, select Properties > Power Management, and clear “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”.

Reboot your PC after this tweak and try again.

I think this tip will help a lot of people, thanks Brian.

Vic Limbo (Philippines) who apart from having the coolest name in the competition said…

Upgrading Windows 7 from Vista hangs at 62%.  Reboot your PC and it will back to Vista. Look at the log file \$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther\setupact.log and examine carefully. Usually it cause by Iphlpsvc service.  Adding environment variables will fix this. To do this:

1.       Restart the computer. Then, your computer will roll back to Windows Vista.
2.       Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Properties.
3.       On the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables.
4.       Under System variables, click New.
5.       Type MIG_UPGRADE_IGNORE_PLUGINS in the Variable name field.
6.       Type IphlpsvcMigPlugin.dll in the Variable value field.
7.       Click OK three times to close the dialog boxes.
8.       Start the upgrade installation again.

Which is a really useful tip.  Let’s face it, anything that helps get people off Windows Vista is brilliant!

Suresh Govindarajan (Nebraska) who wrote…

Getting BSOD (rare in Windows 7) or experiencing frozen windows frequently?

The starting point of your troubleshooting should be “Event Viewer”.

Go to control panel – System and Security – Administrative Tools – Event viewer or type EventViewer in start menu search box.

click on Windows-system in the left side panel to view system events. you can filter the events to see only critical/error events using right side panel.

By seeing the error details, you can find the cause of BSODs and freezing apps

Exellent tip there too.

Congratulations to all the runners up who will be notified by email and a big thanks to everyone who entered.  The quality of the entries was incredibly high.

Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out from Microsoft Press is available to buy now HERE, and The Windows 7 Power Users Guide is available to buy HERE.  Both are available in paperback and as an eBook.

“A book for people who use Windows 7 at home or at work and know it can do more for them, but who don’t know how. The Windows 7 Power Users Guide contains helpful how-to’s, full colour pictures and quick tips to guide you through everything from using the Start Menu and Taskbar to backing up your documents and identifying and fixing problems.”

Mike has been writing for some time now on our sister sites Windows7News.com and ConnectedInternet.co.uk.  He said about coming to gHacks “I like to approach things from an end-users’s point of view, after all, we’re not all MSCE qualified tech support engineers.  I’m looking forward to bringing some support, news and a little bit of humour my posts at gHacks and I’m very grateful to Martin for the opportunity.”

We look forward to Mike’s contributions which will begin later this week.  Welcome aboard and good luck.

A new week recap will be published on each Monday from now on giving short but precise information about the posts (max of one per day) that have been published at Otakugadgets in the last seven days. On to the posts:

• Sony Vaio VGN-NW125J/T: HD, Thin and Light with a Low Battery Life – Sony is one of those companies that give a lot of attention to the appearance and the details of their laptops. Apple of course leads the industry in this (read Jobs is) but Sony is a good second in the design aspect. From their Vaio series of high-end laptops comes the well-designed and good looking Sony Vaio VGN-NW125J/T.
• 5 Recent Voice Controlled Gadgets That Are Totally Cool! – Voice control is not what it used to be at one point. Back in the days when it was first introduced as part of mobile phones and other gadgets, it was still in its nascent stages. At that point, it was nothing more than a gimmick. This I can say from first-hand experience with older Nokia phones. The accuracy was nowhere near usable and well, it was not something you would want to rely upon.
• Altec Lansing Expressionist Series Speakers: Double Barrel or Single Bass, Take Your Pick – A lot of people these days are making a permanent shift to laptops. There are various points as to why everyone is leaving their desktops but the main reason is the compactness and the portability. Laptops are fast becoming as powerful as desktops and hence it is easy to understand why people who wouldn’t make the switch earlier are doing it now. While laptops can match desktops spec to spec now, there’s usually one thing missing when people make the switch and that is audio.
• Hewlett-Packard Pavilion dv4-1465dx: Runs longer and heavier – The Hewlett-Packard Pavilion dv4-1465dx is another laptop that is focused on being a great 14-inch laptop for students. As you might already know, students demand specific things from their laptops and the recent run of student friendly laptops try to conform to those demands. This particular portable has the advantage of a really long battery life. It has a huge battery that is likely to last you all day and for real.
• Dell Studio S1440-022B: If you want budget and slim minus an optical drive, this is it – The Dell Studio S1440-022B is targeted at school students who are looking for a budget laptop. This new offering from Dell does something quite bold and does away with the optical drive altogether. As a result, the laptop becomes much slimmer and weighs less as well.
• RIM (Research In Motion) BlackBerry Curve 8520: A Cheaper Curve – The new BlackBerry Curve 8520 is the model that comes after the Curve 8900. It is a lot like the 8900 with some of the features missing. Physically the design of the Curve 8520 looks a lot like the Curve 8900 but the former has enough new features that set it apart.
• 8 Eco-Friendly ways of turning your gadgets green – I have recently been noticing a lot of new Eco-gadgets (or green gadgets if you will) in the market. A year or two back, these genuine eco-friendly products were barely practical let alone cool. But all that has changed. They are now looking pretty sleek and you can actually use them if you can get them. They aren’t always available and they are not available everywhere. If you do get them rest assured that that they are pretty cool and very practical.

Let us know if you have any tips or requests. We would love to hear them.