Maximum PC Virtual PC 2007 RSS Feed

Microsoft’s MED-V Beta Allows you to run old apps in Vista

Justin Kerr — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:33:21 -0600

When Windows Vista launched back in January of 2007, incompatibility was a term that was synonymous with the new OS. Things have clearly improved since then, but almost everyone has at least one or two applications that simply refuse to run, and probably will never see an updated version. The problem for Microsoft grows even larger when you look at businesses that often have very custom mission critical applications that tend to be rather fussy about their operating environment. For these businesses, Vista was simply not an option. The use of virtualization as a solution to incompatibility is nothing new. Unfortunately in most cases it is an overkill approach that requires multiple OS licenses, and a beefy enough rig to support both the guest and host environments.

Those in search of a better solution are overjoyed by the launch of Microsoft's Enterprise Desktop Virtualization Beta, also known as MED-V. The release was announced on the official MDOP blog where Senior Product Manager Ran Oelgiesser seemed enthusiastic about the future of embedded virtualization. “For those of us on the MED-V product team, our primary goal was to deliver an enterprise virtualization solution for the compatibility challenges that IT teams have with some of their line-of-business applications, during the upgrade to new operating systems (like Windows Vista). With MED-V 1.0, you can easily create, deliver and centrally manage virtual Windows XP or 2000 environments (based on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007), and help your users to run legacy applications on their Windows Vista desktops”. MED-V is slated to leave beta in Q2 2009.

With the Windows 7 launch on the horizon, is this too little too late?

Virtual PC Your Way to Mastery of IE6, IE7, and IE8

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:34:10 -0600

Let's face it, web developers. Even if you're the most devoted fan of Firefox, Opera, or Safari, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is still Internet Explorer. Like IE or hate it, your pages had better work properly with it. Unfortunately, you can only have one version of IE running on a test PC at a time...or can you?

Add Virtual PC 2007 SP1 to your Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows Server 2003 or 2008 box, and install your choice of Windows XP SP3+IE6, Windows XP SP3+IE7, Windows XP+IE8 Beta 2, or Windows Vista+IE7 in VHD format. Now, it's easy to find out which pages make a particular flavor of IE gag, and you can switch between IE versions running in different VMs with the click of a mouse. For more Virtual PC downloads, including release notes, click here.

These disk images work until April 2009, so you have plenty of time to work out page glitches. Not developing websites? No problem! Try them anyway.

Redmond Kicks Virtualization into Hyperdrive with Hyper-V

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:16:55 -0500

Hyper-V Arrives, One Million Downloads Later

On Thursday, Microsoft released its Hyper-V virtualization product for Windows Server 2008 as a manual download (KB950050; for other downloads needed to manage Hyper-V, see Craig Swartz's blog). Hyper-V is Microsoft's second-generation virtualization for servers (Virtual Server 2005 is Microsoft's original virtualization product). Hyper-V, like Virtual Server, is a free download, and has been downloaded over a million times since its beta release in February.

Virtualization 101

Virtualization has been around for several years, both in servers and in desktops. A virtualized environment enables a single physical server or PC to host multiple guest virtual machines (VMs), enabling each guest to run the same or different operating systems and use host resources in isolation from other VMs running on the same system. Virtualization enables a single physical server or desktop to do the work of several, and many companies, including VMWare and Citrix among others, have already staked out major sections of virtualization territory. So, what makes Hyper-V such a big deal?

Why Bare-Metal Hypervisors Beat Hosted Virtualization Solutions

Virtual Server and its desktop counterpart, Virtual PC, use host-based virtualization. In host-based virtualization, the computer loads the host operating system first, then loads VMs into memory. Because the host operating system uses a substantial amount of system resources, VMs run much more slowly than they would if they were installed directly on the physical hardware.

Hyper-V, on the other hand, is an example of a so-called "bare-metal" hypervisor virtualization technology, in which a control program runs on the physical hardware and controls virtual machines. A control program like Hyper-V requires far less hardware and memory resources than a host operating system. According to a Microsoft news release, Windows Server 2008 + Hyper-V can perform at speeds reaching 90% or more of a physical (non-virtualized) system. For more details, see the chart in this article.

Hyper-V, unlike its predecessor, also supports multiple-processor VMs. And, as ZDNet's Between the Lines blog points out, Hyper-V has a huge economic advantage over VMWare - it's free! For more information about Hyper-V, see the official FAQ.

Can You Run Hyper-V on a Desktop System?

Actually, yes - assuming your desktop is running Windows Server 2008 with a processor that supports hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V). To learn how to optimize Windows Server 2008 for desktop use, see this multi-part series at MSDN's "The Way I See It" blog, or this article at XYHD.tv.

Hyper-V Virtualization Tips

To learn how to enable the appropriate BIOS settings needed for Hyper-V support, see John Howard's article. Wondering if your current PC could run Windows Server 2008 (and Hyper-V)? Visit Gibson Research Corporation's SecureAble website to check your system.

Graphic courtesy of Between the Lines.

Windows and Imaging News, Mid-May Edition

Mark 'marcus_soperus' Soper — Fri, 16 May 2008 10:59:47 -0500

A Smarter, More Powerful, Virtual PC

Microsoft has rolled out Service Pack 1 for Virtual PC 2007, its free desktop virtualization environment. VPC 2007 SP1 weighs in at 31.7MB for 32-bit versions of Windows XP Professional; Windows Vista Ultimate, Business, and Enterprise; Windows Server 2003; it's a bit larger (31.8MB) in its 64-bit edition. So, what's new?

- Support for Vista SP1, XP Professional SP3 and Windows Server 2008 as guest operating systems
- Support for Vista SP1 and XP Professional SP3 as host operating systems
- 64-bit operating systems can now be used to host VPC 2007 SP1 (however, you cannot run 64-bit operating systems as guests yet)
- Hardware-assisted virtualization (which takes advantage of the hardware virtualization features in the latest Intel and AMD processors)
- Multiple-monitor support for virtual machines

For all the details, download the Virtual PC 2007 SP1 Release Notes.

Update for Virtual Server 2005

There's also an update for Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, Redmond's server virtualization tool, to support Windows Vista SP1, Windows XP SP3, and Windows Server 2008 as guest and host operating systems. Learn more and get the update from KB 948515.

Photoshop Express Gets More Social and Protects Your Originals

Adobe Photoshop Express, the online photo sharing and casual-editing web service we told you about in April, has just been enhanced with several new features. In a letter to users on Thursday, Adobe's Jennifer Stern announced the following updates:

Flickr integration We've officially hooked up with Flickr ;-) Now you can pull photos from Flickr into Photoshop Express, amp them up, then upload them back into Flickr to show them off to your vast and adoring fan base.

Embeddable player Take your photo slideshows to the wider webified world with the embeddable player, which lets you post your slideshows to Facebook, MySpace, and other sites where your audience awaits.

Save as Go version crazy with the new Save As feature. With Save As, you can keep the original shot of your best friend alongside all the ones where you gave him a tragically oversized head. (Your work is genius—why not save it all for posterity?)

I used the Save As and Embeddable Player features to build a simple Flash-based slide show embedded below (you might need to permit your browser to open ActiveX code, depending upon your security settings):

You can learn more about using Photoshop Express by checking out the free ebook from Kelby Training (a major Photoshop training and publishing resource) here.

Trying Another OS? Use Your Windows Knowledge as a Fast Track to the Commands You Need

Mark Soper — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 19:33:24 -0500

Thanks to virtualization environments like Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and bootable LiveDistro (Live CD) Linux distros, it's easier than ever to test-drive another operating system without blowing away your current favorite. You may want to take time to download an operating system manual or invest in a good third-party book after you decide on a new OS, but in the meantime, you'd probably appreciate an easy way to learn its commands.

UCG to the Rescue

The Tom's Hardware website features the Universal Command Guide for Operating Systems page, based on the book of the same name by Guy Lotgering and the Universal Command Guide (UCG) Training Team. The UCG web page builds on your knowledge of your favorite operating system's commands to teach you the equivalent(s) in others. It includes commands for Windows versions from 9x through XP, OpenBSD 2.7, Red Hat Linux, Solaris 7 and 8, MacOS 9.1, Novell NetWare 3 through 6, and AIX 4.3.3. So, whether you're taking Linux for a spin or going back to DOSland for some retro gaming, you can probably find the commands you need.

Turning What You Know About Windows Into Knowledge of a New OS

To use the UCG, enter a command you are familiar with and select the operating system you're trying (or use the default ALL to discover matching commands in all supported operating systems). UCG lists the operating system(s) with a matching command. Click More info… to see option switches and, more importantly, equivalent commands from other operating systems. For example, the scandisk command for checking and repairing disks in DOS/Windows is the equivalent of the Linux/BSD/Solaris/AIX fsck command, while fdisk is the command used for disk partitioning in both the DOS and Linux/BSD/Solaris/AIX families, but diskpart and diskmgmt.msc are used in Windows XP.

Not Perfect, But Handy

Some versions of Unix aren't covered, and because the book the website is based on was published in 2002, there are some gaps in coverage. However, for a quick and easy tool that uses what you know to make you smarter, the UCG is worth bookmarking. Even if you're perfectly happy with your current OS, it's fun to dig around and discover how different operating systems perform the same tasks.