For a while now I have been seeing random people complaining about the fact that they cannot install Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 Home Editions (Basic or Premium).  This always struck me as odd – as I was sure that this was a supported configuration – but I did not reply as I did not have the time to try this configuration myself and confirm that it did in fact work.

I finally had the chance to try this out – and while I can confirm that running Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 Home Editions is supported and does work – I also stumbled upon the probable cause of peoples confusion.

If you go to the official Virtual PC website (http://www.microsoft.com/virtualpc) and indicate that you are running Windows 7 Home – you will be (correctly) informed that you are not eligible to run Windows XP Mode:

Unfortunately this page does not explain that you are eligible to run Windows Virtual PC.

To clarify – “Windows Virtual PC” is the virtualization program that allows you to create and run virtual machines on Windows 7.  “Windows XP Mode” is a free pre-configured Windows XP virtual machine.  “Windows XP Mode” is not available for people running Windows 7 Home editions; but these users can download Windows Virtual PC and use a separate (fully licensed) copy of Windows XP to create their own Windows XP virtual machines and get all the functionality of Windows XP Mode.

You can download Windows Virtual PC directly from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2B6D5C18-1441-47EA-8309-2545B08E11DD

And as you can see – on this page it does state that Windows 7 Home editions are supported:

Hopefully the main webpage can be updated to make this less confusing in the future.

Cheers,
Ben

My post on how to configure the default virtual machine location for Windows Virtual PC has raised a number of questions.  One of which is: what is the default default virtual machine location for Windows Virtual PC?  This question is almost always then followed by the question – why is it that?

Before getting into the answers to these questions – I would like to start by stating that this has been a surprisingly contentious issue; both with our users and inside the development team itself.  With that acknowledged – I am not trying to argue that one choice is better than an other – but rather to explain the logic behind our current choice.

Now – on to the answers:

What is the default default virtual machine location for Windows Virtual PC?

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\

Why is that the default default location?

Virtual PC 2004 / 2007 defaulted to storing virtual machines in the users “My Documents” folder – and there are many people who like to have their virtual machines stored there.  There were a couple of reasons that drove us to change this default in Windows Virtual PC:

• Many users now have their “Documents” folder redirected to a network location.  It is preferable to run virtual machines off of local storage – so we wanted to find a location that was guaranteed to be local where we could also guarantee that the current user would have the ability to read / write.  %LocalAppData% is pretty much the only location that provides these guarantees.
• Many users who are using Windows Virtual PC just for Windows XP mode do not want to see the virtual machine – and do not care where the files for it are.  For these users the Windows XP virtual hard disk is truly more like application data than one of their documents.

Of course – if you want to store your virtual machines in a different location – the original blog post that sparked this discussion (linked at the top of this post) tells you everything you need to know about changing the default virtual machine location for Windows Virtual PC.

Cheers,
Ben

Whether you are running Virtual Server on Windows 7, or just trying to manage Virtual Server from a Windows 7 computer – you will need to use the Virtual Server Administrative Web Site under Internet Explorer 8.  This is possible – but there are a number of things that you need to do:

1. Enable compatibility mode
   
   If you do not use compatibility mode with Internet Explorer 8 – none of the drop down menus will work, which renders the website unusable.  Under Internet Explorer you should open the Tools menu and select Compatibility View Settings.  Here you can add the URL for your Virtual Server server.
   
2. Turn on the Internet Explorer menu bar
   
   The Virtual Server host key (right ALT) causes the Internet Explorer menu bar to pop into existence every time you try to release the mouse from a virtual machine.  This causes a lot of annoying jittering around on the screen.  You can get around this by just configuring the Internet Explorer menu bar to be permanently displayed.  To do this open the View menu under Internet Explorer, select Toolbars and then select Menu Bar.
   
3. Get rid of annoying credential prompts whenever connecting to a virtual machine
   
   There are two possible ways to do this:

1. Put the Virtual Server website in your trusted websites, and enable

1. Open the Internet Explorer Tools menu
2. Select Internet Options
3. Change to the Security tab
4. Select the Trusted sites zone
5. Click on the Sites button
6. Type in the URL for your Virtual Server site and click Add
   (You may need to uncheck the option to Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone)
7. Click Close
8. Click Custom level…
9. Scroll to the bottom and find the User Authentication section.
10. Select Automatic logon with current user name and password.
11. Click OK and OK.
    
    

1. Open the Internet Explorer Tools menu
2. Select Internet Options
3. Change to the Security tab
4. Select the Local intranet zone
5. Click on the Sites button
6. Click on the Advanced button
7. Type in the URL for your Virtual Server site and click Add
8. Click Close and OK and OK.
   
   Note: If you are doing this on a Windows 7 computer that is running Virtual Server you will be greeted by an endless loop of dialogs that say The site you specified already exists in the Trusted sites zone. Would you like to move it to the Local intranet zone?  Hitting Yes on this dialog will just cause the same dialog to come up again – and checking under the trusted sites does not display the Virtual Server site.  The solution here is to run Internet Explorer as administrator and then follow these steps.

You should now be able to use Virtual Server from Internet Explorer 8 happily.

Cheers,
Ben

From time to time people have asked me how to install Virtual Server on Windows 7, and have even pointed me towards attempts made by other people with varying levels of success.  But I have not looked into this until today – because it is unsupported. 

Let me state that again – to be crystal clear – running Virtual Server on Windows 7 is not supported.  If you try to do this and things do not work for you – do not contact me or Microsoft – as the answer will simply be that it is not supported and that you should not do that.

If you need a server virtualization solution Microsoft recommends that you use Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2.  If this is not an option for you (most commonly this is because your computer does not support hardware virtualization) then you can run Virtual Server in a supported fashion by doing so on Windows Server 2008.

But why am I talking about how to do this today?  Well – I needed to do so for the purposes of a demo that I am working on.  I am setting up a demo that I want to run on a single computer, that needs to have some server infrastructure running in the background.  Ordinarily I would just setup the servers inside Virtual PC – but in this case the demo is centered around Virtual PC – and I do not want to have a bunch of server virtual machines cluttering up my demo (petty – I know).

What is the deal with running Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 on Windows 7 anyway?  Well – if you just try to download and install Virtual Server on Windows 7 you will be presented with the following dialog:

The reason why this dialog is presented is because Microsoft has explicitly decided to not support, or test, Virtual Server on Windows 7.  Have I mentioned that this is not supported?  Just to reiterate – this is not supported. As Virtual Server includes kernel mode drivers – the fact that they are untested and unsupported could be potentially catastrophic for your computer.

Because of this the Windows 7 application compatibility engine detects that you are trying to install Virtual Server and stops you.  At this point you have two options (apart from the obvious one of not running Virtual Server on Windows 7):

1. Try to trick the application compatibility engine into not recognizing Virtual Server
2. Just turn the application compatibility engine off

The problem with trying to trick the application compatibility engine is that it usually involves renaming files / messing with the registry in ways that may potentially break Virtual Server anyway (thus defeating the point of the whole exercise).  The problem with turning of the application compatibility engine is that you may encounter problems with other applications as a result.

Since I am only running a limited set of applications in my demo environment, I felt more comfortable with the second option.  To turn off the application compatibility engine you need to:

1. Run GPEdit.msc
2. This should open the Local Group Policy Editor
3. In the tree (on the left) select Local Computer Policy then Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components and finally Application Compatibility
4. Locate the entry for Turn off Application Compatibility Engine and double click on it
5. Select the Enabled radio button and then click OK
6. Next locate the entry for Turn off Program Compatibility Assistant and double click on it
7. Select the Enabled radio button and then click OK

You should now have something that looks like this:

Now you will need to reboot your computer (forcing a group policy update is not enough in this case). 

Before moving on I would like to quickly discuss exactly what the impact of these policy changes are:

1. Disabling the Program Compatibility Assistant means that Windows will no longer tell you when you are about to run a program with known compatibility problems.  It will just sit by quietly and let you try (and most likely fail).
2. Disabling the Application Compatibility Engine means that Windows will no longer try to correct known compatibility issues.  This means that there may be programs that were working before that start failing – because Windows is no longer fixing things up for them.

So the summary is that you should really only do this if you are running a limited set of applications and can confirm that they all can run with the application compatibility engine disabled.

Once the computer has rebooted you should be able to run the Virtual Server installer with no problems:

Once you have done this you will want to install the Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 update.  This package added official support for running Virtual Server on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 – and solves a number of compatibility issues that you will encounter on Windows 7 without this update.  Installing the update is a little tricky – as it is shipped as a .MSP file that will fail to install if you just double click on it.  Instead what you need to do is to open an administrative command prompt and run to following command:

msiexec /update KB956124.msp

You should now be ready to go with Virtual Server.  However, there are some potential issues with this configuration:

1. A number of people have contacted me with reports that SCSI disks do not work with Virtual Server when running on top of Windows 7.  I have not seen this problem myself (SCSI disks are working fine for me) so I do not know what is happening here.
2. There have been a number of reports that Virtual Server fails to set file permissions correctly on Windows 7.  I have seen this problem myself – but have yet to suffer any ill side effects (apart from an annoying event log entry about it).

Finally – here are the latest links to the Virtual Server bits if you are going to try this out yourself:

• Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 installer: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=bc49c7c8-4840-4e67-8dc4-1e6e218acce4
• Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 update: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=886876b7-e17c-4429-85da-f623506c5f2c

Cheers,
Ben

Last week MED-V 1.0 SP1 was released as part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2010 refresh.  This update adds some key new functionality:

• Support for Windows 7 hosts – both 32-bit and 64-bit
• Support for running the MED-V server on Windows Server 2008 R2
• Support for Japanese Windows versions

Note that MED-V 1.0 SP1 still only supports Virtual PC 2007 SP1, so you will be running Virtual PC 2007 SP1 on Windows 7 (not Windows Virtual PC).  That said – I am still really happy to see this come out as it means that I can get rid of my last Vista computers and have Windows 7 everywhere.

It also means that I can use native VHD booting for my MED-V demo environment :-)

Existing MDOP customers can download the MDOP 2010 Refresh at the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC).  For people with MSDN / TechNet subscriptions, the MDOP 2010 Refresh can be downloaded from MSDN and TechNet.

If you do not know what MED-V is or why you should care – if you need to use Virtual PC to solve an application compatibility problem on more than half-a-dozen computers – you need to be looking at MED-V to provide a deployment and management solution for your virtual machines.  More details hare here: www.microsoft.com/med-v

Cheers,
Ben

We have not updated Virtual PC 2007 to add support for running Windows 7 as a guest operating system at this point in time.  However, this is possible to do – with two important caveats:

• You really need to have hardware virtualization support to get decent performance
• Understand that this is not supported.  If you encounter problems – feel free to come here and tell me about it – but do not contact Microsoft Product Support

So what do you need to do?  Well the process is quite simple.  The first thing is that when you create a new virtual machine – you should select Windows Vista as the guest operating system:

This ensures that the right virtual hardware is configured for the virtual machine.  You can then install Windows 7 directly into the virtual machine with no special steps needed.  After Windows has finished installing you will be able to install the virtual machine additions that are included with Virtual PC 2007 SP1.  After this stage you should have all the integration functionality and drivers for all the devices in the virtual machine:

So why do you need hardware virtualization support for good performance?  Well, virtual machine additions breakdown into two parts:

• The integration features (drag-and-drop, desktop resizing, shared folders, etc..)

• This part tends to be fairly robust and resilient to operating system changes.

• This part is very operating specific and involves a bunch of work to get working each time a new operating system comes out.  This part is also only necessary if you do not have hardware virtualization.

Microsoft only supports Windows 7 on Windows Virtual PC when hardware virtualization is present.  And while Windows 7 is not supported on Virtual PC 2007 – in order to get decent performance you need hardware virtualization there as well.

Two closing notes to be made:

• Amusingly, as Virtual PC 2007 has not been updated to officially support Windows 7 as a guest operating system – Virtual PC will identify the guest operating system as Windows Vista in various locations.
• While I have not encountered any issues with Windows 7 – my usage does not represent thorough testing – so do not be surprised if you do encounter an unexpected error / inexplicable issue while using this configuration.

Cheers,
Ben

For as long as I can remember – Virtual PC has allowed you to resize the virtual machine window and have the guest operating system change its screen resolution automatically.  The way this is done is that once you finish resizing the virtual machine window, we send a message into an integration service inside the virtual machine that in turn requests a desktop resolution change, just like a user changing the desktop resolution manually.

This works because of the excellent support in Windows for changing screen resolutions on the fly*.

Unfortunately, Remote Desktop (which is used by Windows Virtual PC) does not support changing screen resolutions on the fly.  In order to maintain the same level of functionality in Windows Virtual PC as with earlier versions of Virtual PC a new approach had do be tried.

If you do not have integrated mode enabled we continue to change the guest operating system desktop resolution like we always have.  If you do have integrated mode enabled we will instead break the Remote Desktop connection and create a new one at the new window resolution.

The can be a bit disconcerting – as it is not uncommon to see a momentary login screen while the new connection is created.  But you can rest assured that there is no potential for data loss / application disruption.  An easy way to think of this is to imagine what happens if you are using Remote Desktop to connect to a physical computer and the network gets disconnected – forcing you to reconnect to the remote computer.  When this happens everything will be just as you left it – because Windows maintains your login session even though you are not connected.  The same thing happens with Windows Virtual PC.

The important thing here is that even though different methods are used, whether you have integrated mode enabled or not you can always easily resize the virtual machine window and have the guest operating system adapt to your new window size.

* A little side story here.  When I started working at Connectix as a tester on Virtual PC I remember seeing a number of interesting bugs with virtual machine screen resizing which were a result of the fact that support for changing screen resolutions without reboot was not very reliable in Windows 95.  Thankfully all of these issues were sorted out by Windows 98 and this has been rock solid for every Windows release since then.

Cheers,
Ben

Continuing in my theme of running Windows Virtual PC everywhere – I think it is time to provide an update on my Virtual PC on Hyper-V post from just over 2 years ago.  So here is the updated Windows XP Mode on Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 on Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2 screenshot:

The the same caveats from two years ago still apply:

• Booting through the BIOS of Virtual PC is quite slow.  Expect to wait for ~1 minute before the guest OS gets up and running.
• Get the Integration Components installed as quickly as possible - it really makes things much faster (for fairly obvious reasons Virtual PC cannot use hardware virtualization in this configuration).
• This is in no way supported! If you try this an find an interesting bug - feel free to send me a message but please do not call Microsoft Product Support!

Cheers,
Ben

A couple of people have contacted me and reported performance issues with Windows XP Mode on systems without hardware virtualization support.  One thing that I did not mention in my post last week was that you will need to upgrade the integration components on the Windows XP virtual machine after applying the update to the physical computer.

You can do this by:

1. Boot the Windows XP virtual machine
2. Login to the virtual machine with an administrative account
3. Open the Tools menu on the virtual machine window
4. Select Upgrade Integration Components

At this stage the integration components installer should start automatically – and will require a reboot when it is finished.

You can check to make sure you have the right version of the integration components installed by:

1. Boot the Windows XP virtual machine
2. Login to the virtual machine with an administrative account
3. Open the Start menu
4. Open the Control Panel
5. Open Add or Remove Programs
6. Click on the entry for Virtual PC Integration Components
7. Click on the Click here for support information. link

The version number is displayed on the dialog that is now opened.  Windows XP Mode ships with version 14.0.7600.16392 of the integration components.  After the upgrade you should have version 14.1.7600.16403 – like this:

Cheers,
Ben

With our recent update to Windows Virtual PC that allows it to run on systems without hardware virtualization support – I have been flooded by a stream of people asking what hardware it will run on / if it will run on their system.

The short answer is: If it can run Windows 7, it can run Windows Virtual PC.  Note that Windows 7 has a requirement of needing a 1GHz processor – so that should help you qualify your system.

To drive this point home, I provide the following bit of evidence:

This is a photo of OS/2 Warp 3 running on Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 on my Dell Vostro A90 netbook (the Vostro A90 is basically the business version of the Dell Mini 9).  This is a system with an Intel Atom N270 processor – which means it runs at 1.60 GHz and has no hardware virtualization support.

And as you can see – it works just fine.

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. Friday afternoon nerd challenge: Can you identify all the hardware that is sitting in the background / around the netbook?