30 Nov 2004

When I first started working at Connectix, one of my favorite past times was to tease the CTO, Eric Traut, about the fact that BeOS did not work under Virtual PC. Eric is a bit of a perfectionist, and liked BeOS, so it bothered him that it did not work...

'What Works and What Doesn't in Microsoft Virtual PC 2004' ( http://vpc.visualwin.com/ ) is a great website that is maintained by Jonathan Maltz. It lists all reported operating systems that people have tried under Virtual PC. At this stage there are...

Well - my kids are both finally asleep - and 'Santa' has been to put presents in their stockings - so I have a little time to relax before heading to bed early (as I know that my children will wake up *Very* early). So what better to do than to post to...

Well my father just emailed me to let me know that if you Google for 'Ben Armstrong' this blog is the first on the list ( http://www.google.com/search?q=ben+armstrong ). Woo Hoo!

Every now and then someone will report that they are having problems launching more than 10 or so virtual machines under Virtual Server. Inevitably it turns out that they have enabled the /3GB boot option ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp...

Yesterday I mentioned a utility that we include in the Virtual Machine Additions for DOS - 'IDLE.COM'. When we came across to Microsoft (from Connectix) we found out that for various technical and legal reasons - Microsoft has strict policies about having...

From time to time someone notices that when they run DOS under Virtual PC it uses 100% of the host CPU to do absolutely nothing, and wonder why this is the case. The answer is relatively simple - and it is: 'DOS is never actually doing nothing'. Most...

In case no one has noticed - when Friday comes around - my main interest in Virtual PC is just to kick back and play a couple of games. Today I felt like playing 'Raptor: Call of the Shadows' - this was a classic vertical scrolling fighter plane game...

With Virtual Server 2005 we added the ability to cluster two virtual machines over a shared SCSI bus. If you are like me - your response to this is 'Cool - I can setup a cluster and play around with it all on one computer... Shame I don't know how to...

Well we are at the final post in my series on migrating a physical computer to a virtual machine. If all other steps have failed the last thing to check is the HAL that is being used by the operating system. The HAL is the 'Hardware Abstraction Layer...

Duke Nukem 3D is one of the classic 3D shooter games - and is the game that most people think of when they hear 'Duke Nukem'. I can personally remember getting together with friends at LAN parties and playing Duke Nukem 3D marathons - where the first...

The other day I explained how to install OS/2 Warp 3 red and blue under Virtual PC 2004 ( http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2004/12/07.aspx ). OS/2 Warp 3 connect is very similar to OS/2 Warp 3 Blue edition - however it also has support for...

Returning to the series on how to migrate a physical computer to a virtual machine ( http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2004/11/30.aspx ) the next step in our journey is - what to do when you can't even boot the virtual machine into safe mode...

One of the cool things about working at Microsoft is having access to the Microsoft Archives. It turns out that Microsoft has been quite fastidious about keep record of all product and press releases since the beginning of time. And all of this information...

Following Duke Nukem ( http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2004/12/03/274205.aspx ) - Duke Nukem II was a huge step forward in the Duke Nukem series. It provided native VGA support, parallax levels and sound blaster support. And just like the...

Before I get going - I should warn you that this is going to be a big post. Today I am going to talk about getting OS/2 Warp 3 running under Virtual PC. Specifically - I am going to talk about OS/2 Warp 3 Red and Blue. You see - there are actually three...

When most people hear the words 'Duke Nukem' they thing of a 3D shooting game (and a darned good one too). However I think of old school platform gaming. Long before Duke Nukem 3D - Duke Nukem first appeared in an Apogee platform game. It had the classic...

A couple of people have noticed that if they run WINMSD.EXE on their virtual machine it reports that they have 64mb of ram - irrespective of the amount of ram that they actually have assigned to the virtual machine. The reason for this discrepancy is...

Continuing on from previous 'migration' posts ( http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2004/11/24.aspx and http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2004/11/22.aspx ) - once you have your computer converted to a virtual machine - and you have...

About 1.75 years ago Microsoft acquired Connectix's virtual machine technology. At that stage I had been working at Connectix for a year and a half on the Virtual PC for Windows product line. As a long time IT enthusiast - it seemed kind of strange to...