One of the biggest challenges with automating virtual machines today is being able to detect that a virtual machine is at a specific place in execution (like waiting at the Windows login screen). A highly effective way to do this is to do a comparison...

And now we know one of the reasons why Ben is in 'Vegas. This years Microsoft Management Summit saw the arrival of some significant announcements around Microsoft's plans for virtualization. To summarize: In the short term, Microsoft is responding...

Hi All, Sorry about the lack of posts - but I am currently in Las Vegas - for the Microsoft Management Summit. Tomorrow I am going to be presenting on 'Developing on Virtual Server' and 'Best Practices for Deploying Virtual Server' - and hope to have...

One of the biggest complaints that we have heard from customers is that the support policy for Virtual Server was not very clear. The main cause of this lack of clarity has been that it has been up to each Windows Server System team to decide and communicate...

Well we have come to the final entry in the 'SimCity' series. You might be surprised to know the SimCity 4 runs under Virtual PC - I know I was. Despite the fact that SimCity 4 states that it has a minimum requirement of a DirectX 7.1 3D capable card...

A regular question I hear is "How can I stop Virtual PC from storing all of my virtual machines in the 'My Virtual Machines' folder in 'My Documents'?". The answer is simple - but obscure. To change this you need to create a system environment variable...

I'm feeling lazy today (fighting off a bit of a cold) - so for today's post I am telling people to go off and check out my interview on Channel9 - at: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=56723 Cheers, Ben

Wow - that is a wordy title - but after much waiting the Microsoft Virtual Server Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 was released today. For those of you who do not know - Microsoft Operations Manager (also known as 'MOM') is a very...

SimCity 3000 continues to build on the success of the previous SimCity releases - with the same old strategy. Take the base game, add more complexity, add more options, add more realism and modeling - and I have to say, it rocks! The only downside of...

Every now and then a user will report seeing an unrecoverable processor error under Virtual PC - and wonder what the heck is going on and what it means. Virtual PC will display this error message when one of two events happen: When something happened...

A while ago I told you about using the non-integrated mouse feature under Virtual PC (here http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/03/14/395625.aspx ). Now it turns out that there is no easy way for a user to turn this feature on or off under...

I regularly get asked about how networking works under Virtual PC and Virtual Server - so today I will attempt to provide generic overview of how virtual networking works. Each virtual machine is created with one emulated network adapter by default (and...

Compared to the original SimCity - SimCity 2000 is a fantastic leap forward in game play - adding several new elements (like subways, bus stations, light and dense zoning and much much more). SimCity 2000 is an incredibly addictive game that I have personally...

Virtual Server has a handy functionality where it displays the last 5 entries in the Virtual Server event log at the bottom of the master status page. One of the reasons why this is so useful is that all errors encountered by Virtual Server are logged...

A little known feature of Virtual PC is that if you have a couple of virtual machines open and want to quickly exit Virtual PC all together - you can hold down the control key and click the 'X' on the Virtual PC Console. This will automatically save state...

Hi All - sorry for the little break on my Blog. I have just bought a new house and have been tied up getting ready to move into it, so posts may be a bit sporadic over the next week or two. Cheers, Ben

As I mentioned here: - Virtual PC supports the ability to change the guest resolution by resizing the virtual machine window (rather than changing the resolution through the standard dialogues). This is a very cool feature - but one of the problems that...

SimCity Classic was the city simulation game that started it all. In SimCity you play the role of a Mayor and get to manage the development of your city. You can build roads, hospitals, schools, police stations and more - you also get to zone areas, balance...

There are a couple of ways to setup Virtual Server 2005 so that a given script / program can be launched in response to a specific event - and each way has its advantages and disadvantages. To start with - I am going to talk about using the 'scripts'...

The other day I realized that I had never tried my copy of 'Jumpman Lives!' under Virtual PC. 'Jumpman Lives!' is a very nice remake of the original Jumpman that was released by Apogee in 1991. Being a fan of the original game I had immediately downloaded...

Normally when you are running a virtual machine, we will display a window that exactly matches the size of the guest operating systems display. This is because the guest operating system does not know it is inside of a virtual machine and believes that...

Amongst the many varied settings for a virtual machine under Virtual PC there is a 'Mouse' setting which most users do not use or understand. The first confusing thing about this setting panel is that it is only enabled when the virtual machine is running...

Zork would have to be one of the all time greatest text adventure games. One of the greatest things about the Zork series is that it is based on the Zork books - which themselves are 'interactive fiction' - in that you get to make decisions as you read...

The VMRC client used by Virtual Server is a basic ActiveX control. This is very handy for integrating it into your own custom client application. Starting with a blank Windows Application project under Visual Studio .NET 2003 you will need to select:...

This week I felt like it was time to take a walk down memory lane... For those who are unfamiliar with 'Adventure' I will quote http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/a_history.html : Before there was Doom, Ultima, Rogue, or even Zork, there was... Adventure...