July, 2005

A couple of weeks ago Guoqiang Wu posted an article on compacting virtual hard disks ( http://blogs.msdn.com/guowu/archive/2005/05/17/418457.aspx ). The main issue he addresses is that in order to efficiently compact a virtual hard disk - you need to...

Virtual PC and Virtual Server do not provide a direct user interface to allow people to change settings in the virtual machines. The way that you change settings in the BIOS under a virtual machine is by hitting the 'DEL' key to enter the BIOS during...

#### COSMO'S COSMIC ADVENTURE - APOGEE! #### ALL-NEW, Mar. 1992. SUPERB EGA/VGA graphics. Full-screen wide adventure/action game made with SUPERIOR graphics than our Duke Nukum. Show-stopping animation! FIRST EVER IBM PC GAME WITH MULTI-SCROLLING LEVELS...

Master of Orion II has clearly fallen into the trap that so many strategy sequels struggle with.  This is that they have a successful original game, and then release a sequel which essentially the same game but with nicer graphics and more complexity...

Jeff Trumbull has just posted a very cool 'quick virtual machine backup' script for Virtual Server at: http://cwashington.netreach.net/depo/view.asp?Index=1049&ScriptType=vbscript The big trick involved in this script is that he uses vshadow.exe...

A month or two ago I was emailed an application compatibility report from another team at Microsoft - which had run an extensive application compatibility test suite under Virtual PC. Of the ~400 applications this test suite had tested, 12 had reported...

A new beta of WinImage has been released with support for viewing and editing virtual hard disks from Virtual PC and Virtual Server. You can download a copy of the beta from here: http://www.winimage.com/beta.htm Personally - I am really happy to...

#### HOCUS POCUS v1.1 by APOGEE! (VGA) #### #### 386SX or higher -- 567K required #### Scrolling action game like Mario Bros., with constant variety of levels, graphics, music, enemies and awesome parallaxing backgrounds. In a magical kingdom, Hocus must...

A long time ago I posted about the fact that if you try run Windows 3.0 under Virtual PC - it will only work if you use the EGA video driver - and even then the color pallete will be corrupted ( http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2004/10/20...

One of my favorite uses of Virtual PC / Virtual Server is to play around with various different operating systems. The Amiga research operating system (AROS) is one that caught my eye - downloadable from http://www.aros.org/ the developers describe it...

One of the more esoteric performance metrics that users can access when trying to determine bottlenecks in the performance of their systems is that of the processor queue length. Simply speaking the processor queue length metric reports how many threads...

#### SECRET AGENT - BY APOGEE SOFTWARE! #### ALL-NEW for Feb. 1992. EGA/VGA graphics. Full-screen scrolling adventure/action game were you play a top agent who must retrieve stolen plans to a deadly laser satellite. Action and puzzles galore! Secret...

Crystal Caves is another platform game developed by Apogee - and it is built using the same game engine as Secret Agent. ########### CRYSTAL CAVES ########### Ultra-smooth, full-screen scrolling EGA animation and graphics, like Commander Keen. You...

### Xenophage v1.1 Shareware From Apogee #### ### and Argo --- A Killer Fighting Game! #### "...revolutionary game design, it may indeed knock fighting fans into another universe of apocalyptic action." * Strategy Plus. Visit www.apogee1.com for screen...

A little known feature of Virtual PC is that you can select a virtual machine in the Virtual PC Console and drag and drop it off on to the desktop. This will create a shortcut on the desktop that can be used to launch the selected virtual machine directly...

A usability problem that some people struggle with under Virtual PC is that of hitting the wrong [X]. To explain - on a virtual machine under Virtual PC there is an [X] in the top right hand corner that can be used to close the virtual machine. This is...

Master of Orion is by far the greatest space strategy game ever. This game has everything. You command you race as you explore the universe, colonize new planets, research new technology, construct massive space ship fleets, meet, negotiate, spy on and...

########### PAGANITZU FROM APOGEE ########### Indiana Jones look out--here comes Alabama Smith! Paganitzu is an epic EGA graphics adventure game in a vast Aztec pyramid. Can you overcome the amazing puzzles in the many perilous chambers. Longest animated...