MSMQ from the plumber's mate

After applying service pack 1 for Virtual PC 2007, I loaded up my virtual machines and found I couldn't see the Internet anymore. A reboot of the host didn't help and then I checked if the guest OS was configured to use the local network card only to...

Not as seemless as I'd hoped. Setup would load, do some work with a few information pop-ups and then unload without error. Looking around I find that SQL's setup generates a time-stamped subdirectory to help you troubleshoot the failure - not new to...

I'm seeing some weirdness with Shared Folders in Virtual PC. I've made some directories on the host machine visible to the guest OS to install SQL Server. Setup doesn't work and, on looking at the source directories, I find that what the guest can see...

I'm trying to install SQL Server 2008 and setup claimed that: "Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 installation has failed. SQL Server 2008 Setup requires .NET Framework to be installed." which was strange as Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 service pack...

Initially applying the service pack on my VirtualPC machines complained about lack of disk space and I messed about for ages to free up a few vital GBs. Then the update changed its tune and reported Out of Memory (0x8007000e) without elaborating any further...

Always problems... I'm trying to free up space in my Virtual PC machines so I can apply service pack 2 for Windows Server 2008. First place to go is Disk Cleanup - usually good for a few GB. Strangly, my upgraded machines report that I no longer have...

The United States Government has a couple of standards that provide a benchmark for implementing cryptographic software. These are: Federal Information Processing Standard 140-1 (FIPS 140-1) which was published in January 1994, and is superceded...

Having compressed my virtual disks, I've moved on to upgrading the guest operating systems on my three virtual machines from Windows 2003 to Windows 2008. Seems simple enough - set up a shared folder to the source files on the host machine and run SETUP...

One of my machines is set up with a small virtual BizTalk environment - a domain controller, an SQL server and a BizTalk server - running under Virtual PC. Works like a dream - I love drag-and-drop to the virtual machine (Virtual Server, are you listening...

Microsoft's Virtualisation Support Policy Team has been working for months on development and testing so that they can clearly define, not surprisingly, virtualisation support policies. The result is the Virtualisation Support Wizard which you can use...