Virtual PC Guy's Blog

-- Ben Armstrong, Virtualization Program Manager

Talking about core virtualization at Microsoft (Hyper-V, Virtual PC and Virtual Server).
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April 2009 - Posts

Monday, April 27, 2009 9:34 AM

Windows Virtual PC is Coming…

Over on the Windows Blog, Scott Woodgate has given us a brief glance of Windows Virtual PC, which will be part of Windows 7.  One of the most exciting features is the new “Windows XP mode” which is designed to help people with Windows XP applications
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 33 Comments
Thursday, April 23, 2009 9:52 PM

Should virtual machine snapshots be used in production? [Hyper-V]

With all of the information that I have been talking about around snapshotting – one conversation that I have often is whether people should use virtual machine snapshots in production environments (note that this is virtual machine snapshotting I am
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 1 Comments
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 8:45 PM

Why is my virtual machine "Paused-Critical"? [Hyper-V]

Virtual machines will go into the “Paused-Critical” state under Hyper-V if we detect that we are going to run out of space for the virtual hard disks.  If we were to run out of space for expanding a dynamic or differencing virtual hard disk – we
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 0 Comments
Tuesday, April 21, 2009 8:37 PM

What happens if I start a virtual machine that is merging snapshot files? [Hyper-V]

If you have a virtual machine with snapshots that have been deleted, it might decide to start merging in the snapshot AVHD files the next time the virtual machine turns off.  But what if you were only planning to turn off the virtual machine for
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 2 Comments
Monday, April 20, 2009 8:31 PM

Why does it take so long to delete a virtual machine with snapshots? [Hyper-V]

You may have noticed that if you try to delete a virtual machine with snapshots associated with it – it can take quite a long time for the virtual machine to complete deleting.  The reason for this is that we are “cleaning up” the snapshot files
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 2 Comments
Friday, April 17, 2009 3:51 PM

The Secret of Monkey Island under Virtual PC

Getting back to playing all of my LucasArts games under Virtual PC, the next stop is The Secret of Monkey Island.  In many ways this was a land mark game for the adventure game format, and many people have fond memories of it. You play “Guybrush
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 11 Comments
Thursday, April 16, 2009 3:21 PM

What happens when a snapshot is being merged? [Hyper-V]

I would like to now take a little side road to look at what happens under the covers when you delete a snapshot and we need to merge the AVHD.  Imagine that you have a virtual machine with the following snapshots: If you were to delete Snapshot 2,
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 0 Comments
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 1:01 PM

What happens when I delete a snapshot? [Hyper-V]

A lot of people have asked me what happens “under the covers” when they delete a snapshot.  Unfortunately, the answer is relatively complicated as there are multiple things that could happen. As previously discussed – a snapshot is composed of a
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 2 Comments
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 11:40 AM

Linux Integration Components Available on Download Center

After living on connect.microsoft.com for a while – and requiring registration for download – the Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V are now available for quick, easy download from the Microsoft download center. You can grab it directly from here:
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 1 Comments
Monday, April 13, 2009 5:32 PM

Where are my snapshot files? [Hyper-V]

In the past I have talked about the fact that when you take a snapshot of a running virtual machine, we create a copy of the virtual machines configuration files, write the current memory to disk and create a differencing disk that is then used to run
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 0 Comments
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Wednesday, April 08, 2009 5:20 PM

Running the Hyper-V Management Tools with Alternate Credentials

I recently needed to run the Hyper-V Management Tools with alternate credentials.  In my case I was wanting to manage a domain joined Hyper-V server from a non-domain joined Windows Vista computer.  The easiest way to make this work is to have
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 1 Comments
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Tuesday, April 07, 2009 5:01 PM

'General access denied error' (0x80070005) when Starting Hyper-V Virtual Machines

We just recently posted a Knowledge Base article ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969556 ) that points to an Intel support article ( http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sysmgmt/sb/CS-029944.htm ) that may help you out if you are seeing
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 0 Comments
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Monday, April 06, 2009 4:40 PM

MED-V now available

I have been somewhat remiss in not talking more about MED-V (Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization) and hope to address this by finding the time to post about it in the coming weeks. If you are not aware – MED-V is an enterprise management solution
Posted by Virtual PC Guy | 1 Comments
 
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