Alexander’s Blog

A lot of my students are interested in learning about TCP/IP. I try to post resources that help them with their work or in preparation for their certification exams. Here’s a book by Joe Davies of Microsoft that is available at no cost to the readers. Joe is an awesome author and has written numerous books, including several books for Microsoft Press on TCP/IP.

Joe will be the guest speaker at our Windows Networking User Group meeting on September 2, 2009. He will talk about IPv6 transition technologies. Click here to access the FREE TCP/IP book.

Microsoft Students to Business (S2B) connects Microsoft-skilled students with partners and customers for entry-level and internship positions. Developing the right skills will help you get a head start on your career. Microsoft Students to Business, offers you a set of trainings and free software that will boost your potential in the eyes of employers. Find out how to Access Free Software, Begin training on Microsoft products and Experience IT Careers by going to Microsoft Students to Business Web site.

The objective of the S2B program is to inspire local businesses to communicate the competency requirements for new talent, to evaluate the skills of students ready for an entry-level job or internship and collaborate with Microsoft and local education institutions to provide the curriculum and training needed to ensure students are prepared to meet the innovation needs of company’s around the globe.

Students engaged in S2B benefit from unique mentoring, training and certification opportunities. Various offerings are available to students at each stage of S2B – when profiling, in application and after their job connection.

The S2B program was first piloted in Italy in 2006 and has since been rolled out in more than 65 countries, connecting more than 300,000 students with new career skills, leading to 15,000 students with jobs and internships as part of the Microsoft community.

Students engaged in Microsoft S2B benefit from unique training and certification opportunities, as well as free career resources including development and design tools. You can also search for jobs, internships and other opportunities by clicking here.

These resources are FREE for students. Check out this FAQ for more information.

I recently posted links to some career-related Webcasts that are available on Microsoft Thrive’s Web site. For those of you who are freelancers, here’s a nice article by Toni Bowers on Tech Republic’s Web site that lists 32 online tools that can help your tech career.

Freelancing is big these days and a lot of IT professionals are finding it beneficial in these hard economic times. The tools that Toni has posted on her blog are all related to the technical freelancers. Click here to read her blog post.

If you are looking for some good career resources, here are some Webcasts that you may find useful.

Thrive Live! (Part 1 of 3) Create a Personal Marketing Plan for Career Success

Thrive Live! (Part 2 of 3) Be Lucky! How to Discover Your Next Job

Thrive Live! (Part 3 of 3) From Dressing to Dollars: Gain Interview and Negotiating Power

Presenter: Perri Capell, Career Consultant

Perri Capell is a recognized authority on career issues. As a journalist and editor, she provided job-search and career advice to millions of readers of The Wall Street Journal and wsj.com, answering their questions directly in her weekly column, Careers Q&A. Perri is a certified resume-writing professional (CPRW) and has worked as an outplacement firm counselor, helping executives and high-tech pros during career transitions.  She is the author of job-search training manuals used by thousands of clients of outplacement firms who are experiencing job transitions and co-author of the book “Diary of a Job Search.”  Perri graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Journalism from Penn State University. She has received numerous journalism awards and fellowships.

As you may know, Microsoft doesn’t support upgrading Windows 7 Beta to Windows 7 RC and most likely it won’t support upgrading of Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 final version. It is, however, possible to upgrade the beta version to RC.

To upgrade Windows 7 Beta to Windows 7 RC, follow the procedure described below.

- Copy the source files from Windows 7 RC CD to your local hard drive on your Windows 7 Beta computer.

- Go to the folder where you just copied Windows 7 files.

- In the Sources folder you will see a file called cversion.ini.

- Double-click the cversion.ini file to Open it in Notepad, or use any other text editor.

- The cversion.ini contains the following entries:

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7077
MinServer=7000

Change the first entry (MinClient) 7077 to 7000 so that both the entries will have the same value, as shown below.

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7000
MinServer=7000

If the version has a different value, do the same thing (e.g. change it from 7100 to 7000).

- Save the cversion file in it’s original location (i.e. “Source” folder).

- Run the setup from within Windows 7 Beta. The setup program will use the new value from the cversion.ini file and you should be able to upgrade your Windows 7 Beta to Windows 7 RC.

When the final version of Windows 7 is released, you might want to try the same technique and upgrade from Windows RC to Windows 7 final version.