Virtual PC Guy's Blog

-- Ben Armstrong, Virtualization Program Manager

Talking about core virtualization at Microsoft (Hyper-V, Virtual PC and Virtual Server).
Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

January 2009 - Posts

Friday, January 30, 2009 11:16 PM

Quest for Glory III: Wages of War under Virtual PC

Yikes! It has been a while since I played these games. I have already covered the first and second installments of the Quest for Glory series - so now - onto number 3! Quest for Glory III continues on with the story from before. You have saved Shapier
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 5 Comments
Thursday, January 29, 2009 5:22 PM

Hyper-V R2 Live Migration Overview & Architecture

There is a new whitepaper that details how live migration in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server R2 works: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fdd083c6-3fc7-470b-8569-7e6a19fb0fdf&DisplayLang=en Cheers, Ben
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 2 Comments
Wednesday, January 28, 2009 6:47 PM

Fixed Disks vs. Physical Disks

I recently was setting up a Home Server on top of Hyper-V (Note: this is not a supported configuration, so if you wish to do the same - be it on your head) and had to decide between using physical disks directly attached to the virtual machine, or using
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 4 Comments
Filed under:
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 5:20 PM

How to handle a missing, but still running, virtual machine

It is possible under Hyper-V to get into a state where you have a virtual machine that is still running correctly - but does not show up in the virtual machine list under the Hyper-V management console.  The two most likely causes for this are: The
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 0 Comments
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 10:24 AM

Live Migration Step-by-Step Guide

Just got an email from one of our technical writers - letting me know that our step-by-step for Live Migration on Windows Server 2008 R2.  You can get the details here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd446679.aspx Cheers, Ben
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 0 Comments
Monday, January 26, 2009 6:07 PM

Hyper-V R2: Changes to the Virtual Machine Settings UI

One piece of feedback we received for Hyper-V is that people wanted an easier way to look at the settings for a number of virtual machines, without needing to keep on closing and reopening the virtual machine settings UI.  To help with this we have
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 2 Comments
Thursday, January 22, 2009 4:41 PM

Upgrading Hyper-V from Windows Server 2008 to Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta

If you have an existing installation of Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 that you want to update to Windows Server 2008 R2 beta, this is possible, but you need to be aware of some of the limitations. The first thing you need to be aware of is that we only
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 5 Comments
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 12:46 PM

Hyper-V R2: Changes for "no hypervisor" booting

In the past I have talked about how to create a "no hypervisor" boot option using BCDedit.  One of the first questions I got was whether this would allow you to use sleep / hibernate - and the answer was "no". Well, with Windows
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 4 Comments
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 5:09 PM

Hyper-V R2: MAC Address Management

Hyper-V has always allowed you to configure virtual network adapters where the MAC address was generated dynamically.  These dynamic MAC address are selected from a random pool of MAC addresses.  With Windows Server 2008 R2 we have added a new
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 0 Comments
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 1:29 PM

Hyper-V Monitor Gadget for Windows Sidebar: Updated (Again!)

After posting about this last week - Tore has been working hard and has now release version 4.1 of his Hyper-V Monitor Gadget.  Key changes include: Added new server manager for easier management Added a Large size (undocked) theme with larger font
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 0 Comments
Filed under:
Monday, January 19, 2009 5:01 PM

Hyper-V R2: Changes to External Networks

With Hyper-V we have always recommended that the parent partition not be connected to external networks - as a security best practice.  However, this was relatively difficult to setup (especially for core installations).  With Windows Server
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 1 Comments
Thursday, January 15, 2009 1:07 PM

Shutting down a Hyper-V / Virtual Server Cluster Node

If you are running Hyper-V or Virtual Server in a clustered configuration - you need to be careful about just shutting down a cluster node.  If you need to shutdown one of the cluster nodes you need to first open the cluster manager and select to
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 0 Comments
Wednesday, January 14, 2009 12:10 PM

Hyper-V Monitor Gadget for Windows Sidebar: Updated

I have posted about this in the past - but Tore Lervik released a new version of the Hyper-V Monitor Gadget for Windows Sidebar last month.  This is a tool that I have installed on all my desktop computers and am hopelessly addicted to.  Recent
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 2 Comments
Filed under:
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 12:04 PM

Windows 7 on Virtual PC on Windows 7

You might be interested to know that this is a combination that works just fine. Here is a screenshot of Windows 7 on Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7: Though there are a couple of things you should know: Use Virtual PC 2007 SP1. Earlier versions of Virtual
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 31 Comments
Monday, January 12, 2009 11:41 AM

Windows 7 on Hyper-V

Here is something neat about the Windows 7 beta release.  Professional versions of Windows 7 (Business, Enterprise and Ultimate) as well as all versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 already come with integration components installed. But - it gets better
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 10 Comments
Friday, January 09, 2009 3:41 PM

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Beta now Available!

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 beta (that is the standalone version of Hyper-V) is now available for download from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E464E255-CDD5-44B2-84E6-3233EAE3F356&displaylang=en With the R2 release
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 1 Comments
Friday, January 09, 2009 2:49 PM

Managing Hyper-V from Windows 7

If you have installed the Windows 7 beta and want to use it to manage Hyper-V you will need to install the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 beta. These can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=82516c35-c7dc-4652-b2ea-2df99ea83dbb&displaylang=en
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 6 Comments
Friday, January 09, 2009 2:27 PM

Trials of Battle under Virtual PC

It has been too long since I posted about gaming under Virtual PC - so today I would like to talk about " Trials of Battle ". This game was made by Stardock in 1996 - and is one of the few "first person shooting" games that exists
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 3 Comments
Thursday, January 08, 2009 4:59 PM

Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2

The Windows Server 2008 R2 beta is here ! (keep an eye here for details on how to get it)  This is a significant release for Hyper-V and this beta contains a number of new features and capabilities. First and foremost – Live Migration is here! 
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 8 Comments
Wednesday, January 07, 2009 5:29 PM

Bad Performance with High-End Graphics and Hyper-V

If you have tried to mix Hyper-V and high end 3D graphics (in the parent partition - of course) you have probably noticed that the performance is bad.  Unfortunately - for the time being - the answer to this problem is that Hyper-V has not been designed
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 11 Comments
Filed under:
Wednesday, January 07, 2009 12:22 PM

How do I Fix a Corrupted Virtual Hard Disk?

People occasionally contact me and ask me how to fix a virtual hard disk that they have which is reporting corruption. The short answer is: "Run data recovery tools inside the virtual machine." For the long answer we need to look at how the virtual hard
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 0 Comments
Monday, January 05, 2009 10:57 PM

Manually adding a virtual machine configuration file to Hyper-V

People have been asking for a while for a way to add a virtual machine configuration file (.XML) directly to an instance of Hyper-V without first needing to export and import it.  Well, Robert Vierthaler beat me to the punch and blogged about this
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 1 Comments
Filed under:
 
Page view tracker