August, 2005

Running Windows Vista Beta 1 under Virtual PC 2004 SP1 / Virtual Server 2005 SP1 is quite straight forward - but there are a few issues to be aware of: Windows Vista Beta 1 does not correctly identify the virtual hard disk when it is not partitioned...

If you have installed Linux (or a *BSD variant) inside of a virtual machine under Virtual PC or Virtual Server - you will probably want to compress the virtual hard disk after a while, to reclaim any unused space on the virtual hard disk. In order to...

I was recently made aware of a program called MaxiVista ( http://www.maxivista.com/ ). This program allows you to use the monitor of a network connected computer as a secondary monitor on your physical computer. For me the really cool thing about this...

For a while now I have been posting about all the different games that you can run under Virtual PC - so I figured that it was about time to make some posts about games that I cannot get to run well under Virtual PC. Origin's Privateer (from the Wing...

Quake. If you do not know about this game - then I am not going to try and tell you about it. Really. Go check out: http://www.idsoftware.com/games/quake/quake/ . Suffice to say that it is one of the key games in the evolution of the 3D first person genre...

One of the features of the Virtual Machine Additions under Virtual PC is that you can easily copy and paste between applications on the virtual machine and on the physical machine. There is a lesser known feature of Virtual PC that works independently...

I have been running Windows Vista for a while now (one of the benefits of being a Microsoft employee) and now that the rest of the world can access it I thought I should pass on some information about running Virtual Server / Virtual PC on top of Windows...

Under Virtual Server we provide a convenient UI to allow the user to change the name of their virtual networks. Under Virtual PC - however - we just use the name of the physical network card for the name of the virtual network. Normally this is okay ...

Most people who use Virtual PC are running it on a uni-processor computer - and are trying to run other programs at the same time; however, Virtual PC can be very demanding on CPU resources at times. To help people deal with this - we have provided the...

In the past I have posted about using Virtual Servers 'thumbnail' API to perform virtual machine automation by checking the visual contents of the virtual machines screen. Chris Smith has just posted a nice chunk of code that will take the raw data...

If you install SuSE 9.0 or later under Virtual PC / Virtual Server - you will get the following error message when you first log in: “Your monitor didn’t report its X- and Y- Size, this might cause display problems like unreadable fonts... Do you...

Another really useful command line option available with Virtual PC is the ' -singlepc ' option. If you launch a virtual machine from the command line and include this option, the Virtual PC console will not be displayed. This is very useful in enterprise...

A little while ago I made a post about running the Amiga Research Operating System under Virtual PC / Virtual Server ( http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/07/18/440250.aspx ) - where I observed that there was an intermittent pause when running...

Under Virtual Server we give you the ability to create multiple private virtual networks for use by your virtual machines (this is very handy for creating complicated, but isolated, networking infrastructures). Unfortunately under Virtual PC we only provide...

Privateer II builds on the concepts used in the original Privateer, but really is a separate new game rather than a typical sequel. It has a new game engine, new universe, new characters, and well you are probably getting the picture. Privateer II is...

Virtual PC / Virtual Server handle the mouse by emulating a standard two button PS/2 mouse with a scroll wheel. Recently a number of mice have been coming out with 4th and 5th mouse buttons. These buttons are usually mapped to the 'forward' and 'back...

There is a new Virtual Server white paper up at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c4dcf45b-72ea-44ed-86aa-1c389ece12f9&displaylang= It is quite a nice write up on how to configure Virtual Server such that you have Virtual...

I was recently forwarded some links for an IT Showcase study on how Microsoft's internal IT departement is using Virtual Server: Whitepaper: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=25DCB14A-03F5-434D-83F7-4D46C1675B87&displaylang...

Over the last week or so I have mentioned a couple of interesting command-line parameters that can be used with Virtual PC. If you want to utilize these options but not have to worry about users using the correct shortcut / parameter - it is possible...