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Have you ever been at work or at home working on a computer, entered a command (or otherwise take a critical action) – and as your finger is releasing pressure off of the <enter> key, or the mouse button you suddenly enter a cold sweat, realize what you’ve just done – and suddenly have a horrendous urge to reach for a garbage can to vomit?

I just had one of those moments.  I rebuilt my ESX server, upgrading it from 3.5 to ESXi 4.0 U1.  That went smooth, I presented my iSCSI LUNS – all smooth.

I than upgraded the virtual hardware on my domain controller.  Then I realized that it’s Server 2008 Enterprise edition, then I recalled that I have AD installed on the D: drive, and finally I remembered this KB article.  Essentially, ESX 4 presents VMDKs to systems as a SAN device, which by default Enterprise edition set Offline, until instructed otherwise.

Welcome to a BSOD loop on my only domain controller.

Fortunately, the system successfully booted to Directory Services Restore Mode – which allowed me to online the D: disk, and successfully reboot my system.

Windows 7 seems to be one of the big things to talk about lately, so I’ll join in.

I’ve been using Windows 7 as my sole desktop OS at home for about 3 months.  I have used a couple different builds.

Some of the things I love:

1. So far all my applications have worked without any major issues.
2. I love how the task bar and quick launch area were merged – it is hands down the best thing Microsoft has added to Windows.
3. It runs great on my P4 2.8 w/ 1.5 GB of ram and shabby video card.
4. mklink – It was there in vista, and is in Server 2008, but needless to say it rocks.

As a day-to-day OS it’s been quite good.  Quicken 2008 runs fine, office 2007, my triathlon software (SRMwin, and WKO+).  When I started with build 7000, I had a quite a few crashes and some issues with one driver, as well as major issues if I had any anti-virus software installed.

I upgrade to build 7048 – and it was rock solid – no issues at all.  I have since upgraded to 7057, which seems to be almost a half step back from 7048 in stability, but has a little bit of new fluff as compared to 7048.

All-in-all Windows 7 is awesome, and I will likely upgrade to it once it is GA.