VMWare Rolls Out Vista Virtualization

MsManhattan writes "VMWare Inc. today is slated to introduce a new version of its workstation virtualization software that supports Windows Vista. The upgrade, VMWare Workstation 6, enables users to run Vista as a host or a guest operating system. Additionally, it allows users to store a virtual machine setup on a portable device — like as a USB drive — and transfer the set-up to another computer. Virtualization, an old concept that has gained new momentum, can help organizations optimize their infrastructures but it can also create expensive management headaches. Just the same, the analyst group Gartner predicts that three million virtual machines will be in use by 2009, up from today's 500,000."

Comments

Vista on ESX

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fairly certain Vista has been supported as guest OS on VMWare ESX 3 for some time.

Re:Vista on ESX

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually since VMware Workstation 5.5.3

Re:Vista on ESX

[rodney dill]

I've used it as a guest on 5.5.3 but the option was labeled 'experimental' Still seemed to work just fine.

I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista performance problems in this new version: running Vista as a virtual OS even under the commercial versions of VMWare was slower than dirt in the last cut.

Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[tibike77]

I'm fairly sure it's not entirely VMWare's fault ;)

Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Two points about your post:

1) this is the commercial version of VMware.

2) the beta versions of VMware WS 6 had debug code active that slowed down the guest VM. try the final release of VMware WS 6, and you'll find there are no longer any performance issues that are VMware's fault.

Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[linzeal]

Windows XP was the same way until 2 gigs of system ram and 256 megs of video ram became standard.

Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[PWill]

Vista under a VM has worked fine for me since January using VirtualBox, the open source VM manager. Once again, the FOSS is months ahead of proprietary...
The only thing that doesn't work is the 3D effects, which don't matter.

Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[Iriel]

I'm just hoping that I can run XP on a Vista computer. Maybe there's still hope for Vista...
</bitterresentmentfromgamingonVista>

Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[Zabu]

How was the parent modded funny.

Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[lemaymd]

I've been running Vista x64 Business under VMware workstation (the free edition) on Fedora for months now, and it's not screaming fast, but more than fast enough for running Office 2007, etc., and far better than native XP on my old P4. I am running a Core 2 Duo with 2GB DDR2-800 and a 1066MHz FSB, though.

Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[Anonymous Coward]

How was the parent modded funny.

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Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/19/00

Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[Vexorian]

3 weeks ago I used windows XP on vmware in an Ubunut Linux host, I have 768MB of RAM and it actually performed pretty well, I was able to use an IDE and compile from it... My Video RAM is 128MB, but I was not able to use any 3d app, not like using 3d apps in virtualization is actuall a sane thing to do...

Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[Architect_sasyr]

Agreed, not very sane... I'm not that hardware oriented, but within a VM you can't directly access the hardware, which I believe is necessary for 3d applications.

Not sure if you wanted a reason or was just posting an idle piece of info. Either way...

Re:I hope VMWare's fixed its Vista perf problems

[Vexorian]

well the sys requirements gp posted for running XP correctly on vmware seemed inflated to me, that's the reason I posted.

magic numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

what does an analysis company base it's numbers of virtual machines on ?

It's not like they are being sold or something like that...

you know you want to...

Just three million?

[Werrismys]

I bet that figure is far too low.
Everyone uses virtualization now.
Half the servers are virtualized.

Where I work some laptops are fitted with virtualized DOS/Win98 environments for very old software (to control old EPROM burners etc). Much easier to roll out a working VM environment and just copy it around than fiddling with constantly changing hardware.

Re:Just three million?

[SQLGuru]

What I like about virtualization is that you can add a layer of security with it. Virus? Trojan? Spyware? No problem. Just don't save settings or blow away the infected virtual image. More people should surf the web from a virtual machine.....it isn't like you need the full blown performance of the host O/S to surf the web.

You can mount directories from the host O/S to save certain pieces of information (bookmarks for example) so that they persist across VMs. Everything else, you aren't really worried about.

Layne

Re:Just three million?

[SCHecklerX]

The workstation version of vmware is great for all kinds of things. I use it when setting up my portable apps on my USB drive (I don't use windows, regularly, but want to have some tools with me when on somebody else's computer, so I set up VMWare with winxp).

Take a snapshot, do an install. Tweak to make portable. Revert the snapshot to pre-install. See if the app works from the USB drive (which is actually mounted under linux, and shared to the vmware session).

Good stuff.

Each different VMWare product is good for different things (ie, use ESX server if hosting a bunch of linux virtual servers, workstation for testing desktop things). I love not having to keep another computer around, or having to dual-boot just to use the random windows-only utility every now and then. It's great for test-installing new releases of linux distros too.

Re:Just three million?

[charlesnw]

I agree. Virtulization is penetrating every aspect of computing from servers to desktops. I wouldn't be surprised to see it in limited form on mobile devices. I would say 90% of companies are using virtulization (in production/dev/qa) and the remaining 10% are using it in dev/qa, or at the very least have a plan to implement it. The hardware/power/cooling cost savings and reduction in management overhead are to great to ignore by even the smallest shops.

Re:Just three million?

[suv4x4]

The workstation version of vmware is great for all kinds of things. I use it when setting up my portable apps on my USB drive (I don't use windows, regularly, but want to have some tools with me when on somebody else's computer, so I set up VMWare with winxp).

Take a snapshot, do an install. Tweak to make portable. Revert the snapshot to pre-install. See if the app works from the USB drive (which is actually mounted under linux, and shared to the vmware session).

Thing is, it doesn't prevent phishing, stealing sensitive info or any of this. Even if you try and keep everything important out of the virtual machine, you still have to type out your e-banking login in there, to login to your e-banking.

Bottom line, it makes reverting after a disaster easier. Which is easy enough on the real machine if you are doing full & regular incremental backups with a program like Acronis True Image.

Virtual machine has its uses, but it's not a layer of security, just the good old "divide and conquer" principle, as if you had a dedicated web browsing machine.

Re:Just three million?

[Val314]

> What I like about virtualization is that you can add a layer of security with it. Virus? Trojan? Spyware? No problem

Dont be so sure about this!

I've read an article (cant remember where) that said that some VM apps have security issues to, allowing malware in the client to infect the host.

Re:Just three million?

[Anonymous Coward]

I once heard that all your base are belong to someone (can't remember who). That's probably true also.

Re:Just three million?

[superpulpsicle]

Please. If it's so great why does vmware need a new update every few months. Everytime any given vendor updates something, vmware needs to update something. Pple who praise it so high have not actually studied all the flaws. It can't be healthy to be switching the base vm all the time.

Re:Just three million?

[Bishop]

The is a vulnerability in the shared folders feature. This is a feature of the VMware Tools which are installed on the guest. It is possible (probable) that there are other vulnerabilities with the VMware tools.

Re:Just three million?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, it doesn't prevent phishing, stealing sensitive info or any of this. Even if you try and keep everything important out of the virtual machine, you still have to type out your e-banking login in there, to login to your e-banking.

  Well, that's why you don't do your e-banking on the same virtual machine as your pr0n surfing. Duh!
On a unix machine, you could skip the whole virtualization/install-windows-three-times jazz and just browse pr0n, and stuff in a second user account that has no read permissions for your primary user's home folder. (but your primary can read the secondary's home) Thus even in the event of a javascript exploit hitting your firefox it can only see what pr0n sites you've visited and what shady no-cd cracks you've downloaded for use with Wine.

Re:Just three million?

[devilspgd]

And even if not installed, some malware could just install it, no?

Re:Just three million?

[Bishop]

Yes, malware could install the tools. It would need system/administrator/root level privileges. The shared folders features would also need to be enabled in the host.

Re:Just three million?

[WuphonsReach]

I agree. Virtulization is penetrating every aspect of computing from servers to desktops. I wouldn't be surprised to see it in limited form on mobile devices. I would say 90% of companies are using virtulization (in production/dev/qa) and the remaining 10% are using it in dev/qa, or at the very least have a plan to implement it. The hardware/power/cooling cost savings and reduction in management overhead are to great to ignore by even the smallest shops.

90% is too high a figure. Unless you're counting by percentage of market cap or something that skews the statistic towards large companies.

Smaller companies (under $5M/year gross revenue) would probably like to use virtualization, but it's just getting on their radar. And it won't be a quick process. Our company is a bit larger then that and we started 1 year ago with a plan to finish migration after about 4-5 years.

The major bottlenecks (server virtualization):

- Developing a business case for a SAN
- Finding the money for said SAN
- Switches and interface cards
- Redundancy
- Buying and setting up application servers

If you spent $10,000 a year ago on a file server, you're not going to just throw that out the window and deploy virtualized servers and a SAN. But migrating over a 3-5 year period makes more sense. The payoff will be in a few years from now when downtime only occurs due to gross failure, rather then the glitch of a single machine.

The speed of migration also depends on the business that you're in. There's still a lot of businesses that only have a handful (maybe just one) server supporting a few dozen workers.

Maybe I'm missing something here...

[Mikachu]

...but didn't Vista's TOS specifically ban using Vista under a virtual machine?

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[Bearhouse]

Depends on the version - you need to buy the most expensive one in order to be allowed to virtualise. Big surprise, huh?

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[whobutdrew]

I think it was specific versions of Vista, if I'm recalling correctly. One would have to use one of the higher-priced versions to virtualize and not violate Microsoft's TOS. It was in another /. article somewhere, I think. I'd search for it if I wasn't at work ;)

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[CastrTroy]

First, I think it's only specific versions of vista. Seconds, I think that it is only a restriction from installing the same license as both the host and virtualized OS. If you use Linux as the host OS, you should be able to use any version of Vista as the virtualized OS. The more expensive versions of vista allow you to run the same license for both the host and some number (4) of virtual computers. At least that's my understanding.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[iminplaya]

Only with the "affordable" versions.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[gstoddart]

Depends on the version - you need to buy the most expensive one in order to be allowed to virtualise. Big surprise, huh?

Can the OS even tell it's being virtualized?

This seems about as enforceable as saying "you're not allowed to have a screen background with boobies in it".

I can envision a lot of people saying fsck them and doing it anyway.

Cheers

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[brouski]

The home versions of Vista are not licensed for VM use. Business and Ultimate are.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[SCHecklerX]

I'd like to see the first case of trying to enforce this. If you buy the product, you should be able to use it on any type of 'computer' it will run on, including a virtual one.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[julesh]

No. In fact, some versions of Vista explicitly allow you to run them under both a virtual and non-virtual machine at the same time (i.e., they're not restricted to only one copy in memory at once). This unrestriction wasn't applied to all versions, which led some people reading the EULA to believe that MS were preventing you running those versions of vista under a virtual machine, but if you read the T&C the right way (which is how a court would read it -- standard terms like this are supposed to be read in the way most favourable to the consumer) you're allowed to, as long as you don't also use the same copy on a real machine.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[Bearhouse]

There's nothing in the software that stops you virtualising, (see http://tinyurl.com/2g2zh5), and if you get Vista 'Home' via MSDN you are even legally allowed to do it, but only for 'testing' purposes.

The main point is to stop big organisations from using cheap versions of Vista instead of expensive ones. They are (a) the people most likely to be using virtualisation and (b) the least likely to use sw outside of the EULA.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[jeffy210]

you need to buy the most expensive one in order to be allowed to virtualise. Incorrect. You just can't virtualize with either Home flavor. Business and Enterprise allow you to do it as well as Ultimate.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[Bearhouse]

Thanks - I was in a hurry with earlier post, just did some research then fixed in my reply above. Confusing anyhows - for ex. you can even virtualise 'home' if you get via MSDN...

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[dmitrygr]

You might be able to tell if you're being virtualized by doing 1,000,000 non-privileged ops, measuring the time passed, do same with privileged ops. On real hardware you know the speeds should be the same [assuming those ops execute in same # of cycles]. If you're virtualized privileged instructions will be emulated by the host, which should be slower...

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[suv4x4]

Depends on the version - you need to buy the most expensive one in order to be allowed to virtualise. Big surprise, huh?

Right, windows sucks, and so on! What about OSX, which version do I buy to virtualize that?

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[Bearhouse]

Better ways here http://tinyurl.com/28lrzx

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[SEMW]

Follow the instructions here.

;-)

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[man_of_mr_e]

Big surprise, huh?

Yes, considering that's not true.

The truth is that you can't use the two LEAST expensive versions for virtualization (not counting the stupid N versions). Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate all have virtualization clauses in their EULA.

Re:Maybe I'm missing something here...

[Bearhouse]

You're right - see my post fixing the earlier one done in haste.

64 bit support

[danglingparticiple]

Looks like 64 bit support is getting better, although Feisty Fawn isn't supported as a host OS yet. From the release notes:

New Support for 32-Bit and 64-Bit Operating Systems
This release provides experimental support for the following operating systems:
* 32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 (Beta, formerly called 4.0 Update 5) as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4 (Beta) as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 7.04 as a guest operating system
This release provides full support for the following operating systems:

* 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 6.10 as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Mandriva Linux 2007 as host and guest operating systems
* 32-bit and 64-bit Solaris 10 Update 3 as guest operating system
* 32-bit Novell Netware 6.5 SP5 as guest operating system

Re:64 bit support

[Gibbs-Duhem]

Actually... under Feisty you can:

apt-get install vmware-player

!!!

Not for workstation or server though, which is unfortunate (and strange, since server is the useful free one).

For VMware Beginners: VMware Howto

[jdan]

For those of you that haven't used VMware, there is a pretty decent howto on installing it on Windows XP:

How-to install VMware Server on Windows XP SP2

--jdan

Re:For VMware Beginners: VMware Howto

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

What is this, digg?

Post the actual link rather than your (or someone elses) blog in hopes of getting ad revenue.

Back to good(?)-old-days of dumb terminals?

[anoopjohn]

First it was dumb terminals and super-duper-server and then it was good pcs and now we are going back to super duper virtual machines and just dumb terminals

Multiple monitor display: Users can configure one virtual machine to span multiple monitors or multiple virtual machines to each display on separate monitors with this industry-first capability, enhancing desktop productivity. Only thing left is for it to support multiple keyboards and mice to take us back to that.

Re:Back to good(?)-old-days of dumb terminals?

[EvilGrin666]

Only thing left is for it to support multiple keyboards and mice to take us back to that. Citrix or vanilla Terminal Server springs to mind if you want to do this sort of thing. Granted it's not sharing a machine locally, but that isn't as useful as sharing across a network using cheap end client systems.

Re:Back to good(?)-old-days of dumb terminals?

[plasticsquirrel]

I don't think many people are seriously considering VMWare as a replacement for the traditional desktop. Virtualization is typically used to replace multiple physical servers with one larger server.

This is very useful for organizations with hundreds of servers, many of which may be only running a single resource-friendly application. The department that I work in, for example, is moving the contents of several web application servers onto one new, larger server running VMWare.

Re:Back to good(?)-old-days of dumb terminals?

[spectro]

Maybe not, but my w2k3 server box at work boots so slowly I am seriously considering putting it in a vm. It takes at lease 8 minutes from power on to desktop ready for usage, I have vmware server running on it and a vm I created with w2k3 server in it takes less than a minute to boot. A few months ago I installed Fedora 6 in my home desktop, then migrated my w2k partition to a VM under vmware server. W2k used to take about 5 minutes to boot, inside vmware is ready in seconds in the same hardware, it boots so fast it's even faster to shutdown/power on than pausing/restoring the VM.

Re:Back to good(?)-old-days of dumb terminals?

[eharvill]

I don't think many people are seriously considering VMWare as a replacement for the traditional desktop. Virtualization is typically used to replace multiple physical servers with one larger server. Granted TFA is talking about Workstation, but in regards to replacing your desktop, check out VDI on ESX... http://www.vmware.com/solutions/desktop/vdi.html

Re:Back to good(?)-old-days of dumb terminals?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only thing left is for it to support multiple keyboards and mice to take us back to that.

Could you not just plug in a USB mouse and keyboard and let the VM take control of them? ;-)

Re:Back to good(?)-old-days of dumb terminals?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think many people are seriously considering VMWare as a replacement for the traditional desktop.

Amongst non-techies I'm sure you're right. Amongst techies we're talking about something else. I happen to have some virtualization (and para-virtualization) experience. Using hardware virtualization (on a Core 2 Duo) with Xen / Linux makes it a breeze to replace the desktop with a virtualized system. Unless you're doing 3D stuff you can't tell the difference between a virtualized Windows XP (accessed through remote desktop) running in a VM and a native Windows XP.

Same for VMplayer from VMWare (free software, but it taints the Linux kernel): running Windows XP under VMplayer feels like native.

If you're technically-knowledgeable running your main desktop in a VM makes a lot of sense... Hardware abstraction being a start, security an important feature (I wholeheartly disagree with the poster who stated that a VM doesn't bring a layer of security: of course it brings a layer of security FFS, I'm firewalling the VM from the system running the VM... Tell how the fc*k this is not a security layer... Without mentionning Snort'ing the network and Tripewire'ing the files), etc.

In this day and age of full-of-holes browsers (and Mozilla / Firefox which I'm using right now certainly ain't an exception) and XSRF and JavaScript holes and whatnots it doesn't make much sense for someone that has some security knowledge to run a browser outside of a VM.

Re:Back to good(?)-old-days of dumb terminals?

[devilspgd]

Is it an AD DC? If so, you've got a DNS misconfiguration causing a 8 minute bootup (or the server is vastly overloaded or underpowered)

Re:Back to good(?)-old-days of dumb terminals?

[plasticsquirrel]

Amongst non-techies I'm sure you're right. Amongst techies we're talking about something else.

Personally, the company that I work for doesn't care whether I'm a techie or not. I'm a developer to them, and they aren't willing to shell out hundreds of dollars so I can run a special, unsupported setup when they have hundreds of PC's to maintain in a controlled environment. Which company do you work at that allows you to install whatever OS you want on your development system, using an unsupported virtualization method like Xen?

I reiterate: In the real world, virtualization is rarely used outside the server room.

Pfft. Easy.

[Shadow Wrought]

All you need to do to emulate the Vista experience is a sharp stick and your own eye.

I *heart* VMware

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

This is welcome news. Let me tell you, virtualization has saved my ass many times, and growing (especially when it's windows).

Example: A system fails to come back up after update and gives me my favorite hal.dll error. Since the hardware abstraction layer is different for nearly every machine, simply grabbing the hal.dll from another machine is not possible.

Now there are several strategies to tackle this problem, for this instance however, because this was a virtual machine living with several other guest OSes which are all running on identical virtual hardware I simply ran a compare between the system32 drives of the borked windows and a working one - found several HUNDRED missing files (how did that happen, who knows), mounted the borked vmdk as the g: drive and copied the good files over to it.

unmounted and rebooted to fully operational status.

Re:I *heart* VMware

[Mistah Blue]

You could have also done a snapshot prior to the update. Then it barfs. No problem, revert the snapshot.

Re:I *heart* VMware

[operagost]

Example: A system fails to come back up after update and gives me my favorite hal.dll error. Since the hardware abstraction layer is different for nearly every machine, simply grabbing the hal.dll from another machine is not possible.

That's odd, because I have been able to simply expand the appropriate hal.dll from only about seven choices on the Windows CD-ROM. I wouldn't try pulling one from another machine; regardless, most of them use ACPI Multiprocessor. Unless you are running Datacenter with some proprietary HAL, in which case virtualization wouldn't make sense anyway.

Re:I *heart* VMware

[tvjunky]

Example: A system fails to come back up after update and gives me my favorite hal.dll error. Since the hardware abstraction layer is different for nearly every machine, simply grabbing the hal.dll from another machine is not possible. Bullshit. As you can see in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309283 there are only 6 HALs and their choice depends on the state of ACPI, APIC and whether the computer has one or more processors. Most modern computers have Hyperthreading or dual core and will use the ACPI Multiprocessor HAL.

Re:I *heart* VMware

[stacey7165]

Speaking from a software long history of working for software companies - we couldn't deliver squat without technologies like VWware. The majority of the companies today doing virtualization are doing it in dev/test environments. Its had a long incubation period there and is catching on to production environments. Big named analysts generally converge that nearly 25% of companies are trying virtualization for production environments - and over 50% fail. Two big sore spots are that security and systems management were not adequately addressed in the incubation period - because they were behind the firewall and not mission critical. Now they are. When trying out virtualization in production - most people confess to a "hope" strategy of deploying slowly and only feeling confident by standing the test of time. This is because they have to manage the physical host with Virtual Center and inside the guests with something else... usually somewhat homegrown. Any problem is fixed with a ooo-ahhh vmotion to a less resource constrained location. This is single handedly slowing the growth of virtualization.

Full disclosure: I work for Hyperic, a VMware partner, and we built a management strategy that brings the virtualization software into the holistic picture of performance of your servers. We wrote a white paper on the subject called "Bridging the Virtual Divide". It is a product whitepaper - but hey, Hyperic HQ is open source, so its easily available to everyone. If you want to read the paper check it out here: http://www.hyperic.com/resources/whitepapers.html

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get any copy of Vista to activate with the OEM firmware hack. MS has allowed certain OEMs to install versions of vista modified to not require activation, at the risk of hassling users, the OS is supposed to come pre-activated. You can take advantage of MS trusting the OEMs by faking the firmware and certificate and the OS installs (and WGA validates perfectly) without any trouble at all, perpetually.

Warning: Vista EULA Restrictions

[giafly]

With the release of Vista, Microsoft has reworded its End User Licence Agreement (EULA) to forbid the use of Vista Home Basic and Home Premium Editions with virtualisation products like Parallels and VMware. Macworld has confirmed the information with a Microsoft spokesperson. - Reseller News

the EULA restricts virtualisation deployments to the Business and Ultimate edition of Vista - PC Pro

Re:Warning: Vista EULA Restrictions

[ronaldb64]

The EULA, is that that long document that I see that if I select "I don't accept" I can't install the program that I just bought, so I'm conditioned to basically accept any EULA that is presented to me? Wow, I wonder if anyone ever reads any of those EULA's (except Reseller News and PC Pro, and, perhaps, Eric Raymond... :)

Re:Warning: Vista EULA Restrictions

[1110110001]

They could also write in their EULA, that I have to give them my first born. At least in my country both are invalid.

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[garett_spencley]

I recently put together a new computer for my cousin and as payment he gave me his old 120GB IDE drive (he went SATA and upgraded to 320GB so didn't need it / want it anymore) and I threw Ubuntu on it. I've wanted to go back to Linux for a while now but wasn't planning to in the immediate since my hard drives were pretty full and I have a few bills to pay before I can justify buying new hardware.

Anyway I'm a web developer so I need to test sites in IE, plus there's a few apps that don't feel like running with wine so I set up VMWare and installed XP. Unfortunately I made the mistake of using a slipstreamed cd that I made from my cousin's retail copy of XP home instead of my OEM Pro cd and so it keeps asking me to activate it.

The problem is, even if I start up with a clean image every time it still reads the current time/date and substracts the time/date that it was installed. So yes, you still need to activate it. I'm going to have to wipe it and install from my OEM cd.

Didn't it work before?

[BestNicksRTaken]

I thought all that was preventing you from running Vista under VMWare was Microsoft's licensing, i.e. you had to buy the uber-expensive ultra-mega-pro-corp-enterprise-unlimited version, and not the crappy home version dell gives you.

I know Vista Home can run VMWare Server as a host (tried it) and Parallels on the Mac can run the MSDN version as a guest (seen it).

So what's the news? Is it really just that Workstation 6 has come out of beta?

Re:Didn't it work before?

[Slashcrap]

I know Vista Home can run VMWare Server as a host (tried it) and Parallels on the Mac can run the MSDN version as a guest (seen it).

To get decent Video, I/O and Network performance for the guest OS it really needs the VMWare tools installed, which are basically just a set of customised drivers.
So I would imagine the most significant change in the new release is that it now includes a set of VMWare tools for Vista guests.

Without those drivers, Vista would run like a pig. With the drivers the situation is greatly improved - it will run like a pig with lipstick.

Network in a box

[Colin Smith]

Yeah, I'm working on a network in a box at the moment, Xen based though. Should be able to scale it from a single user on a single physical machine to thousands of users on tens of machines with almost zero downtime. Very nifty technology.

Re:Network in a box

[legoburner]

I am just posting to try and get the general /. attitude towards Xen... Xen seems to be the fastest virtualisation option by quite a margin, and has excellent features (pci device forwarding anyone?), but will never be in the official linux kernel by the developer's own admission.

Xen has a number of unfriendly (minor) glitches. It is locked in to specific kernel versions unless you really want to have a lack of stability. On the Xen mailing list developers have stated it is not suitable for enterprise use yet.

I was wondering if people are feeling positive about the future of Xen in general? There is still an active developer community (perhaps equivalent in size to mythtv a year or two ago), but will Xen be beaten back by the rapid advance of other technologies, or are the benefits from Xen enough to keep it rolling forwards regardless of alternative virtualisation products?

FWIW, I have 9 Xen virtual systems running on one core 2 duo server (3GB ram) now, and will be pushing that up to about 12 systems as a 'network-in-a-box' solution to a lot of my coding and home network requirements too and I am generally a big fan. I prefer vmware by a long margin for ease of use, but in terms of raw power Xen seems to have vmware beaten by quite a margin (and the PCI passthrough is very very useful for a print server and for playing with network cards). I think Xen will obviously continue to grow but I cant help but wonder if it will fall too far behind a few years from now.

Re:Network in a box

[Doctor Memory]

But if the machine hosting the VM fails, how do you fail over all the virtual machines? Assuming you're working with some kind of distributed app, anyway. Kind of hard to send a "retry" message to a machine that just evaporated. Hmmm, makes me wonder if we'll see some kind of duplex hardware designed just for this kind of environment (Tandem used to make that sort of stuff, I wonder if HP will roll some out).

Interesting idea, though. Your intra-machine bandwidth would be (theoretically) limited only by your memory cycle times, and you'd have a nearly-infinite supply of "hot spares" in case one of your virtual machines crashed.

Re:Network in a box

[Bishop]

I would not worry about the future of XEN. It has some decent commercial backing from Xensource, Red Hat, and Novell. Performance wise Xen's paravirtualization is faster then full virtualization.

Re:Network in a box

[Dan Ost]

If you have warning that the box is failing, you can simply migrate the virtual machines to another box. The virtual machines won't even notice. Xen can do this. Presumably other virtualization technologies can do this to.

Re:Network in a box

[Bishop]

You don't fail over the virtual machines. You fail over the hardware and migrate the virtual machines. Of course it is not "that easy" and there are lots of things that need to be in place for it to work. Any level of service guarantee that you are able to achieve with services on physical machines you can achieve with virtual machines. Virtualization does have the advantage that you can use your hot spare for other things.

Consider the simple case of a webserver with a database backend. For various reasons you would run these services on separate hardware so you need two computers. To support HA you need double the number of computers for a total of 4. With virtualization you can get away with only two physical computers. If one physical computer fails you move its virtual machine to the other physical computer. Now of course the performance is going to suck while both services are running on the same hardware, but sucky service beats no service.

Re:Network in a box

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm my opinion KVM will flush Xen away... But it will take some time.

The free and open Xen is super-slow for anything I/O related when running hardware-virtualized systems (eg Windows or unmodified Linux). Super-slow as in network and disk I/O is basically unusable for anything but single-user desktop use. It's actually so slow that VMWare's VMplayer under Linux that is *not* using hardware-virt is faster than Xen's hardware-virtualization, on the same hardware (pathetic, but true... I've tested it with a ten users Windows 2003 Server tested both under Xen 3.0.4 then under VMplayer).

The bad news: the drivers that makes hardware-virtualized guest I/O not-suck are closed-source and $$$.

The good news? For para-virtualization Xen rocks. Bad news: only modified OSes run as para-virt guests. I've got my SVN / Samba / Squid / NFS servers running as Xen para-virtualized guests. Rock stable and super fast.

PCI device forwarding is nice but AFAIK it only works for para-virtualized guests: in other words, you're not forwarding that super-fast GFX card to your Windows guest, which is stuck with a lame emulated (by QEMU) videocard.

Here's a summary from a few months ago as to why KVM beats Xen easily, and I completely agree with the article. KVM is a little bit new but I expect to switch to KVM very soon. It simply has to many advantages over Xen.

http://udrepper.livejournal.com/15795.html

Simply put: Xen is driven by XenSource and they're out to try to make a buck. They're not playing nice with the community. Their developers base is shrinking and shrinking, with already quite some transfugees that went to KVM. Also there are some big-Linux-kernel-developers-names behind KVM. The XenSource guys are fighting a battle lost in advance for the "hardware-virtualization" side for sure. For para-virt I don't know. There are so many drawbacks with Xen and hardware-virt CPUs will just keep getting better and better at doing hardware-virt (hence minimizing the difference between para-virt and hardware-virt).

KVM made it into the Linux kernel. It's not easy to beat that. Technically Xen isn't "linux only" (it runs on Solaris too, for example) but, still, I don't see Xen as a viable alternative for long. (and this is coming from a huge Xen fan: as I told you, I've got several servers running as Xen VMs).

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[CastrTroy]

Why not just buy a copy of windows XP? If you're a web developer and you think it's important to test in IE, then you should pay for the required licenses to run it. It's not that expensive for XP Home. If you have a license, you should have no problem activating it. If you accidentally used the wrong cd, then install it again. All you're using the computer for is testing websites, so there shouldn't be that much data to transfer between the installations.

I'm using a sys w/ several times Vista's req's

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

To clarify: I'm using a system whose hardware is several times larger than Vista's recommended specs (and without Aero) and Vista still runs many times (10x?) slower under the commercial VMWare (v5) that it does when I wipe the box and just install Vista. Other Windows OSs on the same box are quite snappy under commercial VMWare (v5).

I'm hoping VMWare version 6 fixes this.

The problem is Vista's excessive layering.

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the problems we encounter with Vista is that of excessive layering. This truly harms system performance.

Take your typical AJAX web app. Assuming an IE on Vista client, running on VMware on Windows XP, this is the stack that you've got (from top to bottom):
- JavaScript running on IE
- IE running on .NET
- .NET running on the Windows Vista Win32 or Win64 API subsystem
- Win32/64 API subsystem running on the NT HAL subsystem
- the NT HAL subsystem running on the VMware hardware
- VMware running on the Windows XP Win32 API subsystem
- the Windows XP Win32 API subsystem running on the NT HAL subsystem
- the NT HAL subsystem running on the actual hardware

That's a pretty big stack, with each layer dropping the performance somewhat. A lot of the trouble is due to the JavaScript and .NET layers. At least VMware stays relatively close to the hardware. But in order to offer the high-level services of JavaScript and .NET, a lot of performance must be sacrificed.

Re:The problem is Vista's excessive layering.

[kestasjk]

So VMWare makes calls to the Win32 API on the host machine on behalf of the virtual machine? Nonsense.

Re:The problem is Vista's excessive layering.

[nxtw]

IE does not run on .NET.

This isn't much different than any other modern OS. They all have strict separation of user/kernel code and libaries at a given point. OS X and Windows both have clearly defined subsystems (Win32/Posix/.NET3?, Cocoa/BSD/etc.)

and let's see what you'd have if you ran VMware in Linux
- JavaScript running on some browser
- some browser running on Qt/Gtk and libc
- Qt/Gtk running on an X server
- X server and some browser running on libc
- libc running on some unixlike kernel
- some unixlike kernel running on VMware
- VMware running on libc, the kernel, and Gtk
- Gtk running on an X server
- X server running on libc
- libc running on some unixlike kernel
- some unixlike kernel running on real hardware

Re:The problem is Vista's excessive layering.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where the fuck does it suggest that in his post?

Re:The problem is Vista's excessive layering.

[Anonymous Coward]

calls to the Win32 API on the host machine on behalf of the virtual machine? Nonsense.

Not if you are running the Virtual Machine inside of a window on the host OS. This set-up described sounds much more like a VMWare Workstation set-up than VMWare ESX ( which wouldn't have windows on the bottom anyway...). That said, it seems a bit rash to blame Windows of excessive layering when running Windows on Windows yourself.

Re:The problem is Vista's excessive layering.

[rikkus-x]

The parent post is complete tripe and anyone who feels like moderating it up would do well to get a little knowledge of how browser, virtualization and operating systems work before doing so.

Re:The problem is Vista's excessive layering.

[mrsteveman1]

We are talking about virtualizing Vista on top of Vista/Linux, not Linux on top of Linux, so why you have libc and QT/GTK listed *above* vmware I don't know.

In any case, nothing runs "on" QT or GTK, or LibC. And the kernel isn't "some unixlike" kernel, its Linux like you specified.

Heres an accurate stack
browser
*windows crap*
vmware
xserver
kernel
hardware

Over and above that, if you are using hardware virtualization then all the lines are blurred, and you should be if you have any serious need for virtual machines, otherwise stop bitching.

Re:The problem is Vista's excessive layering.

[nxtw]

I know all of that. I was replacing the GP's very flawed windows example with Linux to point out the ridiculousness.

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just buy a copy of windows XP? If you're a web developer and you think it's important to test in IE, then you should pay for the required licenses to run it.

Or use ies4linux

Too expensive

[Mateo_LeFou]

I could *possibly be persuaded to allow Vista onto one of my machines if someone gave me $200.

Re:Too expensive

[InsaneProcessor]

When Vista can copy a file the same speed or faster than XP....When Vista doesn't require more the two times the memory and resources of XP....When my exhisting base of software (for which I have spend thousnads of dollars) will no longer run on XP.....When I can no longer play BF2 on XP............I will be dead.

Atheism is as much a religion as not collecting stamps is a hobby.

Re:Too expensive

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

at least the USD price is vaguely realistic. Have you seen the markup MS charge in GBP?

Re:Pfft. Easy.

[iggymanz]

that's almost right, but to really nail dah feelin' you'd pay someone else for the eye poke with the sharp stick

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[SScorpio]

You could just download Microsoft's Virtual PC XP image for IE 6 testing and convert it to a VMWare image. Then you can make an copy of it and do a Windows Update to install IE 7 and you can test both versions.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/11/30/ie6-an d-ie7-running-on-a-single-machine.aspx

Not very well...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Didn't it work before?

Not very well...

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=234079&thre shold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=19052155#190 52311

Is this a thinly disguised press release

[jimicus]

Certainly looks like it. And as for the managerial problems - well, I RTFA, and I couldn't make out any specific problems (apart from possible licensing issues, which is always a good one because you can say that about almost any technology you like). Read like a typical Gartner puff piece designed to spend a couple of hundred words not saying anything in particular, but generate a few soundbites for a mindless PHB.

Re:Is this a thinly disguised press release

[TimMann]

If so, it was clever(?) of whoever did it to capitalize the company name wrong.

Great

[HeavensBlade23]

...now Vista can virtually suck, too.

A Pointy Stick needs your permission to continue.

[Minwee]

If you started this action, continue.

* Emulating the Vista Experience

To continue, jam a pointy stick in your eye, and then click OK.

This is my pathetic analogy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Homer: What do I do? What do I do? In the name of God you've got to tell me! [sobbing]
Agent 2: Relax, it's just a simulator. Nothing can go wrong.

Not Impressed So Far

[sluke]

I am one of the unintelligent few who installed a copy of vista business on my laptop at the beginning of the year. I have been using vmware workstation to run linux under windows for about a year now and as such was very interested in VmWare's progress on supporting vista as a host operating system. VmWare 5.5 would run under vista, but only after a lot of tweaking and even then the performance was less than stellar. I enrolled in the 6.0 beta testing program as soon as it was available and I have not been impressed with the product so far. What I have found is that VmWare has fixed most of the nagging issues with User Access Controls etc., but there are still a few major things lacking. The first is that the networking to host OS's seems to disconnect after each suspend without any messages about why or even how to reconnect them. The second seems to be the interaction between vista and VmWare. For whatever reason any time I do a power operation on the guest OS (suspend, restart etc.) my hard disk starts thrashing like crazy and I am unable to use the machine for 2-3 minutes. This is on a laptop with 2Gb of ram that never had these issues under WindowsXP. Additionally, these hard disk thrashing issues happen at random times while I am using the guest OS. Perhaps some of this is due to the debugging that is enabled with the beta builds of VmWare, but I'll certainly be a bit cautious about spending my several hundred dollars on upgrading to Workstation 6.0 given the performance that I have seen so far.

Re:Not Impressed So Far

[karearea]

my several hundred dollars on upgrading to Workstation 6.0 It is not even a single hundred dollars to upgrade from 5.5 to 6 ... $99

Unless of course you live in a country that has a very different exchange rate ... even in NZ it is not even a couple of hundred NZ$

Re:Not Impressed So Far

[Deideldorfer]

Vista ain't done until VMWare won't run!

3D Desktop?

[julesh]

Have they implemented 3D harware acceleration virtualization? I don't see a lot of point in virtualizing Vista if you can't have the 3D desktop stuff.

Re:3D Desktop?

[Jellybob]

Yes... up to DirectX 8 at least, apparently they'll be working on newer versions of DirectX later.

Re:3D Desktop?

[SEMW]

Have they implemented 3D harware acceleration virtualization? I don't see a lot of point in virtualizing Vista if you can't have the 3D desktop stuff. Yes... up to DirectX 8 at least, apparently they'll be working on newer versions of DirectX later. ..So that would be a no, then. Vista's eye-candy requires DirectX 9 -- specifically, I believe it uses Shader Model 2.0 to do all the fancy blurry frosted glass effects, which was bought in with DX9.

Re:3D Desktop?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you get off redefining "no" like that?

3D hardware acceleration is implemented. They just haven't implemented all of the features that Vista wants to do its blur.

Re:3D Desktop?

[SEMW]

How do you get off redefining "no" like that? 3D hardware acceleration is implemented. They just haven't implemented all of the features that Vista wants to do its blur. The new Desktop WIndow Manager in Vista does not work unless you have DirectX 9 supporting hardware. There's no 'legacy mode' whereby you can run some of it on DX8 hardware. Since the original question was "I don't see a lot of point in virtualizing Vista if you can't have the 3D desktop stuff", the answer would be, no, you can't have the 3-D desktop stuff. No redefining happening.

next, virtual virtual vista

[thestreetmeat]

Wow! I could swear I was really using virtual vista!

3d acceleration

[Ender77]

I Like virtual machines but I wish they would allow true 3d acceleration. I have an xp machine(for gaming) with a virtual ubuntu installed. However I cannot install beryl because of the limitations of the system. If there is a way and I missed it, let me know.

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[garett_spencley]

I didn't imply that I don't own a legit copy.

All I said was that I installed from the wrong cd by mistake.

Is there a reason to want to do that?

[norminator]

Isn't most of the point of running Vista (as opposed to XP) that you'd have DirectX 10, Media Center, and Aero? Given the hardware requirements of Vista, I seriously doubt you'd be getting any good gaming or media experiences in a Virtual Machine.

Re:Is there a reason to want to do that?

[Yoooder]

As an end-user--yeah, I agree totally As a developer, it's invaluable. As more people buying computers are being defaulted to Vista we need to ensure compatibility. We've got a dedicated Vista-box used just for testing--but a VM provides an easily resettable environment to try all tests in all combinations. The nicest thing that I've seen with VMWare 6 is that you can run VS2005 in XP, run it's solution within a Vista VM and still debug from the IDE (running on the host-OS). The alternative to this would be running VS2005 directly in Vista (which is known to be a nightmare to do). Anyways, THE SINGLE biggest feature of VMWare 6 that I'm enjoying is multiple-monitor support. Visual Studio 2005 is incredibly unstable and degrades with time. This means I'll build a base-image to develop on, and when performance drags and bugs creep in I'll just rollback.

Re:Is there a reason to want to do that?

[Clover_Kicker]

That sounds like a great testing tool.

- a developer testing their app
- a sysadmin testing Vista against all the apps their users need, all the logon scripts, etc. etc. etc.

Parallels

[Necrotica]

After using Parallels for Mac, VMware has a lot of catching up to do. Coherence mode, the ability to run virtualized applications seamlessly on the Mac desktop, is a beautiful feature.

If the Linux version of VMware offers something similar, I'd be very interested.

Re:Parallels

[espressojim]

And yet VMWare Fusion has DX8.1 support, which is a huge step in the right direction. Also, beta 3 is WAY faster than older versions.

I have both Fusion and Parallels installed on my MBP. Both are nice in different ways. I'm looking forward to them both evolving and growning in the near future.

Re:Parallels

[man_of_mr_e]

Ack, that feature sounds as stupid as Microsoft's new Seamless Terminal Services feature that does something similar with apps run across terminal services. It's just plain stupid, violates all kinds of good UI design rules, etc.. You don't know what machine an app might be changing files on, for instance.

Re:Parallels

[shadester]

If you can't see the difference between OSX UI and a windows UI, then it might be a problem. Myself, I like the feature. For example to use Outlook Web Access on IE instead of safari or camino makes a big difference. Then I can have a windows IE among the other regular windows I usually have open. Really sweet.

cpu frequency problems

[yamla]

VMWare Workstation 5 had a problem when the host operating system changed the CPU frequency. This made the guest operating system clock go wacky and the guest itself almost unusable because letters I'd type would be repeated when the operating system thought I had held down a key for a second or two. The official workaround was to disable frequency scaling on the host operating system which is really not acceptable.

Can anyone tell me if they fixed this issue in 6?

Re:cpu frequency problems

[Anonymous Coward]

in 6 it detects a change in the host clock and throws a message asking you to turn off power management.

Re:cpu frequency problems

[antdude]

I didn't have this problem in VMware v5.5.x on my old Athlon 64 3200+ 754 CPU with its Cool'n'Quiet feature and Kernel v2.6.18-4-K7 in Debian. I only used Windows 2000 SP4 (all updates) as a guest though. What's your hardware and configurations like?

Re:cpu frequency problems

[yamla]

Ubuntu 6.06, VMWare v5.5.x, Athlon 64-3500 and Athlon X2-4800 (at different times). I've used a wide variety of guest operating systems. Are you sure your CPU scales back when idle? You can find out for sure by doing cat /proc/cpuinfo while idle and looking at the cpu Mhz.

Note that this is a known bug in 5.5.x.

Re:cpu frequency problems

[antdude]

Yes, my system does slow down when not heavily used. You can view my results.

What's yours like? ALso, do you have the URL(s) of this known issue? I'd like to read about it.

Re:cpu frequency problems

[phrasebook]

Yours is a single core CPU. I'm surprised you haven't seen the guest clock rate go very fast/slow, but you only get the really wacky behaviour with dual-core. :-)

Anyway, KVM/QEMU handles host clock changes fine and I'm already finding it a good replacement for VMware Workstation. In some ways it's even better (much easier to install, ALSA sound output). Just need a current CPU for it.

Re:cpu frequency problems

[antdude]

Ahh, I did have problems with Cool'n'Quiet on my Athlon 64 4600+ [939] in Windows XP Pro. SP2 (host). I get blue screens randomly and once in a while. Once, my audio driver got corrupted and needed a reinstall. :(

Re:Free Vistas for one and all you say?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I'll get my grandma right on it!

Re:Pfft. Easy.

[sconeu]

You are poking yourself in the eye with a sharp stick. Cancel or Allow?

Works great in VMWare Fusion for Mac

[bill_mcgonigle]

Oops - I didn't realize Vista wasn't supported yet and I've been running it for a few weeks in VMWare Fusion for OSX. It runs great (MBP C2D) and is much faster than the -XP line. I've only got 512MB allocated to it too.

VMWare Fusion would be just about perfect if they added support for adding block devices from files like on linux. Hopefully in the next beta.

Say What?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

..."affordable" versions...

Of Vista?

Parallels sucks compared to VMware

[Werrismys]

VMware is a matured product, Parallels still feels like a hack.
Snapshot manager?
USB 2.0?

Alas, I have not tried the very latest Parallels since I don't have a Mac (I use other ppls macs at the office) but from the little experience I have:

• -The only OS X crashes have been Parallels related
• -The only CD burning problems have been Parallels related
• -It really does not have good snapshotting. You can suspend, then make copy of the VM directory, but that's cumbersome...

Parallels about equals the free 'VMware Server 1.02' product. It is in no way comparable to either the ESX lineage or (an exaggeration) VMware Workstation.

Why?!

[kahrytan]

  For a low low price of $420, a Linux user can run Windows Vista on their Linux distribution.

If I could an OS, I would build custom Linux OS that exclusively runs VMware. Kinda like Windows 98 and Dos. The computer would boot with Linux OS like older pcs booted DOS first, then go straight to Vmware so the entire computer is virtualized. And the Linux OS is designed to only allow vmware to access the internet.

Re:Why?!

[jqpublic13]

Somewhat like Moka5's bare-metal version does?

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[CastrTroy]

And I said if you installed from the wrong CD, then reinstall from the right CD. There shouldn't be much data to transfer if all you use it for is testing websites.

VUAC

[f4hy]

Having Vista run inside of Linux could cause problems for Microsoft Windows. Accept or Deny

Gartner is very wrong

[janap]

"the analyst group Gartner predicts that three million virtual machines will be in use by 2009, up from today's 500,000"

Our small company alone will have rolled out more than 5000 virtual machines by that time, which would account for 1/500 of the volume increase. Not very likely. We replace the hardware of old legacy client systems running OS/2, put the OS/2 system inside a Xen VM, and add another VM running Linux which is our migration target. Very sweet.

There will be a lot more virtual machines by that time. A lot. In all likelihood as many as a hundred times more.

How many nested levels of virtualisation ...

[Anonymous Coward]

would it take to slow MS Office down to OpenOffice levels?

Protected Media Path

[Wolfier]

Wouldn't it be broken easily if Vista is virtualized? Or are virtualized hardware untrusted, thus not able to play anything that requires PMP?

Re:Protected Media Path

[devilspgd]

Virtualized hardeware is untrusted, for now.

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[jasonwea]

I tried this a few months ago with Parallels Desktop for Mac and hit a show-stopper. After migrating the VM to Parallels activation kicks in. The Windows product key seems to have been revoked as it does not activate. Due to the invalid product key, Windows Update does not run either and you can't validate Windows to install IE7.

Luckily work has a few XP licences lying around. I installed two VMs and now have IE6 and IE7 on my Mac (very useful for testing websites). Perhaps installing Virtual PC inside a Parallels VM would have worked to save an XP license, but I really don't know if it would be worth the effort and possible performance issues.

I think Microsoft did this on purpose. Not just to stop a key from leaking into the wild but if the VM re-activated, you could use their precious browser on a non-Windows host. It's not exactly a "free Windows VM w/ IE6" but more like a way to run IE6 on your Windows machine running IE7. I can't blame them for doing that but since one often can't not test in both IE6 and IE7 without potentially losing their job, it does suck.

Multiple monitors

[thinkninja]

Multiple monitor display: Users can configure one virtual machine to span multiple monitors or multiple virtual machines to each display on separate monitors with this industry-first capability, enhancing desktop productivity.

Having guests that can use all your monitors is a huge improvement for VMware. This is something that has been missing for years.

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[SScorpio]

The images seems to become invalid every few months; however, Microsoft then releases a new version of the image. I'm not sure if this was what you saw though as I don't have a Mac so I can't try this under Parallels.

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[devilspgd]

Or even easier, get a free copy from Microsoft

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[jasonwea]

It was definitely an activation issue due to the virtual hardware differences. The same download worked fine on a Windows machine with Virtual PC.

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[devilspgd]

Unless Parallels emulates the same hardware as VPC, XP will see a hardware change and request reactivation. Since the key used cannot be activated, you've run into a wall.

Re:Free Vistas for one and all

[devilspgd]

You can download both IE6 and IE7 versions, no need to update anything yourself.

Re:Great, now vista can visrtually suck

[Anonymous Coward]

you mean, now vista can suck virtually everywhere.

VMware 6 works fine here

[GuyRCook]

Just installed this AM, haven't tried every 'bell and whistle' what I have tried works fine, two thumbs up. Good job.