Microsoft Lifts XP Mode Hardware Requirement

An anonymous reader writes "This week, Microsoft published a patch that allows Windows XP Mode to run on PCs without hardware-assisted virtualization. Which begs the question: Why the bizarro requirement in the first place? Was it an honest attempt to deliver an 'optimal' user experience? Or simply a concession to the company's jilted lover, Intel Corporation — 'a kind of apology for royally screwing up with the whole Windows Vista “too fat to fit” debacle,' as the blog post puts it."

Comments

You know what begs the question?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Language evolves, like hardware requirements...

Re:You know what begs the question?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what happened when they dropped the requirement?

Re:You know what begs the question?

[ColdWetDog]

Not only does this not 'beg the question' it's by our good friend Randal C. Kennedy of Devil Mountain Software fame. Come on guys, this is in the frigging Ars Technica.

The problem with Slashdot these days is that has no taste, absolutely no taste.

Re:You know what begs the question?

[plague3106]

Thanks for posting a link to a reputable site, not some assholes blog.

Re:You know what begs the question?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Slashdot these days is that has no taste, absolutely no taste.

Bitter?

Re:You know what begs the question?

[Hijacked Public]

I believe I've found the source of the taste drain.

My best guess....

[jawtheshark]

The "weird" hardware requirements are probably due to the fact that they expected AMD and Intel only to produce CPUs with hardware support for virtualization enabled. The fact that one of the major CPU manufacturers didn't, is most likely what bit Microsoft in the ass. Still, some OEMs also are at fault, I think: Just recently I got to look after a defective laptop (RAM module was broken...) and I looked in the BIOS. The CPU could do hardware virtualization, but by default it was disabled in the BIOS. Why? I have no idea...

Re:My best guess....

[MightyMartian]

Taking perfectly good hardware and disabling functionality and then selling it a discount isn't new. It certainly isn't new for Intel. Remember the SX series of 386s and 486s, with the FPU disabled, though still on the chip?

Re:My best guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

The "weird" hardware requirements are probably due to the fact that they expected AMD and Intel only to produce CPUs with hardware support for virtualization enabled.

I think its more a case of "If you want to use legacy apps you need to upgrade hardware".

Microsoft gets the hardware vendors to agree to all their crazy demands by promising a bump in sales when a new version of Windows is released.

Re:My best guess....

[jawtheshark]

Yes, I have known Intel for a long time *sigh*.

Just a minor correction... The SX series for the i386 was that the data bus was at half width (16-bit)... The SX for the i486 was indeed a disabled FPU. (Remember the Overdrives? Simply a i486 CPU that disabled the original i486SX)... Aaaah, going down the memory lane.

Re:My best guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that was a way to make chips, spot some with fabrication flaws, and then cut out/disable those pieces which were flawed and still have a usable chip for sale?

Re:My best guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

My best guess is security reasons. Why have a feature enabled by default if the vast majority of users aren't going to need it?

Re:My best guess....

[tlhIngan]

The "weird" hardware requirements are probably due to the fact that they expected AMD and Intel only to produce CPUs with hardware support for virtualization enabled. The fact that one of the major CPU manufacturers didn't, is most likely what bit Microsoft in the ass. Still, some OEMs also are at fault, I think: Just recently I got to look after a defective laptop (RAM module was broken...) and I looked in the BIOS. The CPU could do hardware virtualization, but by default it was disabled in the BIOS. Why? I have no idea...

AMD did. Intel just makes chips for whatever their customer wants. Like how all Intel Macs have VT support, but it's iffy elsewhere (if an OEM can get a discount over chips with no VT, they'll take it).

As for disabling VT support, it's probably to avoid "blue-pill" type malware from hitching a ride underneath the OS. At least, that's a reasonable explanation if you have the setting. Sonys don't (at least, they didn't use to), which was more of an OEM thing by trying to be more Apple-like in control. (After all, Apple doesn't give you any control in the matter. Except well, they see the need for VT and have it enabled).

Ironic, too, since Sony and Apple use EFI firmware from the same company (Insyde).

Re:My best guess....

[zero_out]

What about those 386 PCs that had a turbo button that would allow it to run at twice the speed (66 MHz instead of 33 MHz)? Nobody ever turned it off, so why have the button in the first place?

Re:My best guess....

[commodore64_love]

Minor nitpick:

The 386SX didn't have an FPU. It was actually identical to the 80386, with a 32-bit CPU, but it was seated on a 16-bit bus to save costs. Like a Motorola 68000.

Re:My best guess....

[mister_playboy]

The CPU could do hardware virtualization, but by default it was disabled in the BIOS. Why? I have no idea...

At least it could be turned on. Sony computers with processors that support virtualization have the feature disabled in the BIOS and there is no option to enable it.

Re:My best guess....

[LiENUS]

What about those 386 PCs that had a turbo button that would allow it to run at twice the speed (66 MHz instead of 33 MHz)? Nobody ever turned it off, so why have the button in the first place?

For older games built for 33MHz processors that utilized the clock rate for timing.

Re:My best guess....

[Cro Magnon]

I heard that was for some games, written for the 286/8088, that didn't work right at "turbo" speeds.

Re:My best guess....

[TheKidWho]

You don't realize what that was for? Some programs were designed for the 33mhz processor and were timed for it. By running a 66mhz processor, your program would run 2x as fast which in some cases was undesirable. Hence the Turbo button.

Re:My best guess....

[commodore64_love]

First off 386s ran at 8 or 16 MHz (typically). Second, the purpose was to play older games that were tied directly to the clock and expecting to see 8 megahertz. So if you didn't enjoy playing Turbo Pacman or Turbo Wing Commander, you could press the button and slow everything to normal speed.

Aside-

I found an old laptop with a 386. I was surprised how responsive the machine was even though it's only ~0.02 GHz and a mere 0.01 gigabytes of RAM. Why is it that we could run Microsoft Word on such low specs back then (pre-1995), but not today? Why have programs grown so bloated.

Re:My best guess....

[zero_out]

It's very common for Intel to make 6 different CPU chips that are exactly the same, but use a laser to cut a single connection on the chip to make sure it runs at a certain speed. Sure, you can overclock the CPU, but it still has one of its throttles turned down. These chips are then sold for 10-50% less, depending on which connection is cut.

It costs them exactly the same amount to design and manufacture a 2.4 GHz model as a 3.0 GHz model. In fact, it ultimately costs more to gimp these chips, because they have to pay an engineer to design this mechanism, and buy/maintain the machine that does the gimping. Although, this does mean that I can get a gimped chip for slightly less than the cost to produce it by having someone else pay for the overpriced ungimped version. Still, I think I would rather pay $200 for a 3.0 GHz model, and not have the option of a slower model, than to pay $180 for a 2.4 GHz model while enthusiasts pay $900 for the 3.0 GHz model.

Not only are you right that this has been done for a long time, but it's also become common practice.

Re:My best guess....

[jawtheshark]

As for disabling VT support, it's probably to avoid "blue-pill" type malware from hitching a ride underneath the OS. At least, that's a reasonable explanation if you have the setting

Yes, I heard that lame excuse before too. With so many higher end machines being sold having it enabled (heck, my el cheapo Turion X2 bought in January 2007 has it!) malware should be using it already. I haven't heard of a "blue-pill" type infection in the wild yet. Does it exist?

Re:My best guess....

[Zantac69]

I stumbled across a copy of tank wars that I used to LOVE to play on my old 286...fired it up onmy current system and its bloody impossible to play - everything just goes too fast when adjusting tank settings! But...of course...I had to d'l the 3d enabled port that someone did.

Re:My best guess....

[Chaos Incarnate]

In the case of the 486, it was. Or at least initially. Once yields are up, they can either disable perfectly good chips and sell them for cheaper than what they're capable of, or design a new chip without the part. It seems like Intel and AMD generally go for the former.

Re:My best guess....

[slim]

Correct. It was a way to increase the yield of usable products from a fab plant.

Re:My best guess....

[TrancePhreak]

These days a lot of that happens to keep yields higher. They take chips where one part doesn't meet their standards and disable then, then sell it for a discount. Reduce, reuse, recycle or something. Where do you think AMD tri-cores came from?

Re:My best guess....

[Ephemeriis]

What about those 386 PCs that had a turbo button that would allow it to run at twice the speed (66 MHz instead of 33 MHz)? Nobody ever turned it off, so why have the button in the first place?

For older games built for 33MHz processors that utilized the clock rate for timing.

Yup. I had a bunch of games like that. Used to be fun when someone else was playing, to hit the turbo button on them... Instant GAME OVER.

Re:My best guess....

[amliebsch]

DosBox, friend! DosBox + TankWars = W00t

Re:My best guess....

[tepples]

Nobody ever turned [the speedup button] off, so why have the button in the first place?

Nowadays, CPU speed settings are most useful for battery-powered computers to let the user trade off performance against battery life.

Re:My best guess....

[operagost]

Or to turn it off when it's already on... BULLET TIME

Re:My best guess....

[afidel]

DOSBOX will let you scale the CPU speed.

Re:My best guess....

[asdf7890]

First off 386s ran at 8 or 16 MHz (typically).

While 8 and 16Mhz was all that was available initially, it certainly wasn't uncommon to see 25 and 33 Mhz models later. AMD even put out 386SX and 386DX chips intended to ran at 40MHz and it was claimed by some to run faster than a 486@25MHz for some tasks. I had one of said SXs in my machine at the time and the machine certainly didn't do badly compared to the 486s running at 25MHz at school at the time (though I never ran anything to scientifically test the relative performance).

Re:My best guess....

[Dog-Cow]

It's quite likely that this is done due to manufacturing defects that prevent some chips from running at the maximum speed. Testing is done to find the highest stable speed, and it's altered fix that speed as the max.

Re:My best guess....

[Kjella]

The funny thing is, I never saw any software like that for 386s or even 286s speeds - and I still had a turbo on my 486 I think. I did use the turbo on my 286 that would turn it down to 8086 speeds, because I had some games that depended on that. For all the other computers it was just a meaningless "reduced speed" mode that wasn't standard in any way.

Re:My best guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

All chips in the same family come off the same die. Defects and such make each capable of running different maximum speeds. Yes, some are just gimped for the hell of it but they're all from the same die anyway. Which makes perfect sense, it's not always a scam, some chips just aren't capable of running at the higher speeds. It is pretty much always done this way, it's how CPU manufacturing works (one die, different speeds).

Re:My best guess....

[plague3106]

Hmm... not sure how true that is. I think because of the fact MS forced virtualization for XP mode, sony released a firmware update which enables you to change the setting.

My Vaio laptop was like that initially. I bought it with Vista installed (w/free upgrade to 7 when it came out). I applied to bios update and switched on virtualization after I installed 7.

So I guess the moral of the story is to check your chip; if it supports it, then check sony's site for a bios update.

Re:My best guess....

[psbrogna]

I think programs have generally grown bloated because

• it's easier to code to high level libraries than to rewrite a stack,
• once everyone's addicted to high levels libraries they want more of it and the libraries grow in functional scope,
• in some environments, as library interfaces evolve, multiple versions of the same library are installed side-by-side in an environment rather than doing the harder work of preserving backward compatibility or updating the calling code

If mature software architectures (such as POSIX) have taught us one thing it's that libraries (aka APIs, aka Toolboxes, aka <insert widget nomenclature du jour here>) are best kept small with well (ie. tightly) scoped functionality that adhere to some IPC standard and can be mixed & matched (vice more monolithic or Kitchen Sinkish approaches).

Re:My best guess....

[AvitarX]

Wing Comander needed it on my friends computer (and maybe mine I forget).

When it started it asked you if your computer was fast or slow. allowing for 4 combinations of turbo and game speed.

one worked on my computer, another on my friends, and 3 other combinations failed to work for either of us.

Re:My best guess....

[Dan Ost]

How would you detect it if you were infected?

Re:My best guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

That used to be the most common scenario. Now they typically laser off units that don't pass all quality tests, and they don't typically do it to perfectly good units unless they're running short on the lower end. Yields as a percentage are not like they used to be, so there's always plenty of potential downgrades on any single wafer.

The only exception I can think of for this is the Cell in the PS3, but given that the blade servers haven't exactly taken the world by storm, that's probably where 90% of Cell CPUs are going in the first place.

Re:My best guess....

[mister_playboy]

Hmm... not sure how true that is.

Here's the article discussing it.

Re:My best guess....

[jawtheshark]

Weird behaviour is the prime symptom of anything "wrong" with your machine. I'd also expect weird device detections as the virtualized hardware is being detected by the now "guest" OS. Also, not sure, but running alternate operating systems might show something's wrong.

I think booting with an alternate OS from CD is pretty much the best was to find such software. To avoid that, the BIOS should be infected and I haven't heard of many (if any) BIOS viruses in the wild.

Heck, if the bad guys found out how to do that for every BIOS, I'd be interested to know how they did it: the BIOS of my laptop is limited to 2GB of RAM, while the chipset allows 4GB of RAM... If I'd be able to circumvent that limitation, I'd be a happy puppy...

Re:My best guess....

[ThatsNotPudding]

Remember the SX series of 386s and 486s, with the FPU disabled, though still on the chip?

Grandpa, is that you?

Re:My best guess....

[StuartHankins]

Why have programs grown so bloated.

My guess is these factors all play a role:

• the "higher level" style of programming -- where you lose some control but can supposedly create more apps in the same unit time. I'm not convinced that this is a win for anyone. I'm a bit of a control freak though.
• the insistence of cramming every conceivable options into a program. Yes, most software allows you to check and uncheck options but it's a tedious process and most people just do the "typical" install, resulting in GB of extra crap they will never use.
• Programmers today have vastly improved storage, processors, bandwidth, etc and they aren't from the generation where you had to be crafty to shave time off the compilation / execution / memory requirements. I blame many of the current IDEs for this, see 1st point.
• Programmers today don't regard their jobs as engineers -- and before I start a flame war let me say that I consider software engineers different from the programmers you see at the majority of places today. Software engineers thoroughly understand the implications of their decisions and aren't tapping in code chunks they found on the web.
• The industry as a whole (not real-time OS's or some portable / embedded device programming -- most of them still "get it") has adopted the view that programmer time is expensive and hardware is cheap.

<rant>
What's the solution? I say to start, give the programmers a VM with very limited CPU / memory and let them feel the pain. They will understand better because their top-of-the line machine helps hides so much information including timing bugs. They will spend more time tweaking performance and this will prompt them to make some different programming decisions. I still see people coding all communications in XML because they can't imagine why you'd want the data in a compact format... if it's in-house and you control all interfaces, my view is to make things compact even if it sacrifices the tool- or language- or communication protocol-of-the-day. If you're an Amazon and many people need to communicate with you in an open way, XML makes more sense.
</rant>

Re:My best guess....

[fireylord]

be very careful with that idea, the fact that the chipset technically allows 4gb of ram doesnt mean that the machine would run with any degree of stability, if at all, with more than 2gb. You are assuming that everything else will work with more than 2gb of ram.

Re:My best guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

If I remember correctly, neither the 386 or 386SX had a FPU - you needed a 387 or 387SX (or a compatible equivalent from the likes of Cyrix). The 68000 also had a cut-down variant - the 68008, used by Sinclair Research in the QL. This had an 8 bit data bus, rather than the 16 bit used by the 68000. By the time of the 486, IIRC, the 487 actually completely disabled the entire original 486, so some vendors produced motherboards that would accept just a 487.

Re:My best guess....

[perlchild]

Back then, if the program didn't run on your hardware, especially an office suite designed for businesses, it was the software developer/packager's problem.

Now it's yours...

A combination of moving from lotus-quattro-wordperfect/ms office
to
just ms office, with maybe star office/open office if you know how.

Lack of competition was never a good thing.

That you need a more powerful computer to run the same software is considered a feature by microsoft, or at least, it seems to be, considering they act more like Intel et al. is their customer, and not the person who buys the retail box(which is, to their defense, the minority of their sales, the bulk which is oem deals and business vlks)

Re:My best guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was for when you were running on battery.

Re:My best guess....

[Ipeunipig]

The 386 was released at 12Mhz and increased through the different models up to 40Mhz. The most common however, was 33Mhz.

The Turbo button did not increase the clock, but decrease it to 20Mhz for backwards compatibility.

Re:My best guess....

[jawtheshark]

The CPU is 64bit and the chipset can do 4GB. I pretty much thought that was enough. That said, you might be right. I do happen to have 2x2GB sticks (Bought for another purpose that turned out to be equally braindead. Just in case you try: Atom CPUs can't address 4GB RAM despite being 64-bit *sigh*) If I stick those in, the resulting RAM is 2.6GB. Which I assume translated to 2.8GB addressable since 256MB is used by the integrated Graphics.

That's with the BIOS currently in it (Latest version from OEM). So perhaps you're onto something. It runs fine with 2GB though... I just thought of getting even more out of it.

Re:My best guess....

[aniefer]

High scores were made of this.

Re:My best guess....

[Khyber]

"Hmm... not sure how true that is."

Very True. On HP laptops, both consumer and commercial, unless you paid for ABSOLUTE TOP OF THE LINE you got a processor with VT disabled in BIOS with no way to turn it on.

And this was before Vista even had its first service pack.

Re:My best guess....

[LtGordon]

Still, I think I would rather pay $200 for a 3.0 GHz model, and not have the option of a slower model, than to pay $180 for a 2.4 GHz model while enthusiasts pay $900 for the 3.0 GHz model.

The pricing is part of the product strategy. If Intel could sell Core i7 Extreme's for $200 and still make as much money as they do now, they would. But, the reality is that the "enthusiasts" are effectively subsidizing the lower cost that you get for your "standard" model. Otherwise, your model would be more significantly more expensive and less competitive with, say, AMD's offerings.

Re:My best guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

Take the red pill, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Re:My best guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

Except if it takes a longer time to run your task at lower speeds, you end up using more energy because the rest of the system doesn't evenly scale its energy consumption.

Re:My best guess....

[commodore64_love]

(sigh)

I miss the Motorola 68000-series. For that matter I miss PowerPC too. Now it's nothing but Intel-derived x86.

Re:My best guess....

[spire3661]

Mechwarrior was one. I'll never forget putting that on a fast machine and watching the game speed get insanely fast.

Re:My best guess....

[commodore64_love]

>>>The industry as a whole (not real-time OS's or some portable / embedded device programming -- most of them still "get it") has adopted the view that programmer time is expensive and hardware is cheap.
>>>

They are probably right. When you can buy a brand new PC with 2 gigabytes and 2 gigahertz, and it only costs $300, there's no need to waste programmer time/labor expense trying to optimize the software to fit inside 0.01 GB or 0.01 GHz. In 1990 it was necessary to devote that labor time/cost . Today it isn't.

Re:My best guess....

[Mashdar]

I'm not sure about these days, but it used to be that the clock rate for chips was roughly based on substrate impurities. A less pure substrate was more prone to heat up, and had to me throttled down. The top-of-the-line chips were from batches of exceptional substrate quality. Also, AMD has designed their current lineup with independent cores they can disable (selling a 4-core chip as a 3-core chip when one is defective). This helps yields, which are very important for their bottom line. The 'unlocking' craze for AMD exists because sometimes they disable the core to meet market demand (they have much higher yields on their current lines than most people would have expected), so sometimes your locked core can actually be made to work! But you can bet your but the mechanism would never have been designed had it not helped yield in the first place.

Re:My best guess....

[commodore64_love]

Mt aforementioned 386 laptop has a turbo button. 16 MHz standard speed and 8 MHz with the turbo switch turned off.

Re:My best guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not really. That might be a part of the story, with really defective ones being sold as the lowest tier stuff. However, AMD and Intel both are known to cut down the top tier chips because of of the huge demand on the cheaper (supposedly less capable) chips.

Re:My best guess....

[AnEducatedNegro]

Yes. You learn this in Computer Engineering 101. A chip may only run at 2.7ghz so they sell it at 2.4ghz. This is why you get varying speeds. They already designed the 3.0ghz model but they won't release it until its stable at 3.2ghz. until then you get a 2.4ghz chip at the cost which evens out the loss of 2.7ghz chips and profit from extra 2.2ghz chips. catch my drift? it's called manufacturing, dog.

aEN

Re:My best guess....

[GreatDrok]

I had a 486 DX which came with the turbo button. With the turbo on it ran at 33Mhz and with it off it ran at 8Mhz. The justification at the time was that there were some older programs written for the 8086 which would be far too quick at 33Mhz so the turbo button was added to make them run at the right speed. Some later games (Tetris for instance) detected the clock speed and adjusted their speed so it was consistent across different machines and clock speeds but once the game started at 33Mhz you could hit the turbo button to drop to 8Mhz and it would never get so fast as to be unplayable. Great for massive high scores.

Re:My best guess....

[zach_the_lizard]

You can pick up some ARM stuff if you want to play around with alternative architectures. You can even get some nice boards, like a BeagleBoard to play around with.

Re:My best guess....

[Abstrackt]

Or to turn it off when it's already on... BULLET TIME

I always used it for the burger assembly mini-game in Space Quest IV.

Re:My best guess....

[commodore64_love]

Or just play it on a Commodore 64 or Commodore Amiga emulator. Not only will you have better graphics and better sound, but it will play at the correct speed since these computers, like consoles, had fixed specs.

Re:My best guess....

[TJamieson]

That's why I loved my (486) DX-33. Built-in FPU! Thanks for the memories.

Re:My best guess....

[plague3106]

Did you miss the part where I said I downloaded a firmware update AND AM RUNNING XP MODE ON MY SONY LAPTOP?

Re:My best guess....

[Deorus]

The BIOS that came originally with my EVGA NFORCE 680i SLI had a bug which wouldn't even allow me to enable the feature (it would remain disabled even though it was enabled in the BIOS). Before upgrading it, Virtual PC kept telling me that I had hardware support but it was disabled.

I was also lucky to buy one of the few Core 2 Quad models with hardware virtualization in 2007 (the Q6600). It wasn't until recently that I learned that most models did not have hardware virtualization at the time.

Re:My best guess....

[plague3106]

Well, I responded to a post about SONY laptops specifically, and while it WAS true, a firmware update allows me to run XP mode on my Win7 Vaio.

But I never said anything about HP, nor did the post to which I replied.

Re:My best guess....

[drinkypoo]

Just recently I got to look after a defective laptop (RAM module was broken...) and I looked in the BIOS. The CPU could do hardware virtualization, but by default it was disabled in the BIOS. Why? I have no idea...

Even worse, I have a Gateway "netbook" (it's a 12") with an Athlon 64 processor, marketed and sold as such, and with AMD-V in the hardware, but it's disabled in the BIOS and there is no option to enable it. I knew Gateway was lame, but damn. Never again.

Re:My best guess....

[Type44Q]

I seem to recall that disabling the "turbo" functionality lowered the processor's default core speed to 8MHz, for playing those older games that utilized clock rate for timing.

Re:My best guess....

[Teckla]

the "higher level" style of programming -- where you lose some control but can supposedly create more apps in the same unit time. I'm not convinced that this is a win for anyone. I'm a bit of a control freak though.

Don't forget that applications written in some higher level (and more "bloated") programming languages aren't as susceptible to nearly as many exploits; e.g., buffer overruns.

I'm happy to run a program that's a little slower in exchange for it being much more secure.

Re:My best guess....

[Lars T.]

Not just games - some productivity apps used keyboard driven menu systems with a clock rate timed delay. Try hitting a menu item when pressing the key that moves selection races through it.

Re:My best guess....

[wiredlogic]

The screening process lowers the cost of all their processors because it allows Intel to salvage a saleable product that would otherwise have to be tossed out at %100 loss if marginal processors couldn't be restricted to operating conditions where their reliability is guaranteed. There is no nefarious plotting involved here. It's a natural response to the difficulty of making high-performance devices with small feature sizes.

Re:My best guess....

[Matey-O]

Naw, I'm over here, reminiscing about my 12 Mhz TURBO button.

Re:My best guess....

[cgenman]

There have been periods where they didn't bother to disable portions from working chips, but instead sent out batches that were simply marked below the capability of what they actually provided. I believe this was frowned upon by OEMs who needed consistency more than unexpected upgrades.

Designing new chips without the part require further development and new fabrications. At that point, you're better off fabbing your best chip twice, and disabling some of them. Would they re-shoot a movie, just so they could sell a second, cheaper DVD without the director's commentary?

Re:My best guess....

[Anonymous Coward]

This has a long history. IBM used to put a smaller motor pulley on the 519 Reproducing Punch and lease it for less as a different model. The pulley change was a Sales Change, performed on-site by IBM's engineers.
That meant they could get the customers who couldn't afford the "full speed" machine.
Since almost all machines were leased rather than sold the extra revenue was at no marginal cost.

Re:My best guess....

[sjames]

Actually, that CAN make sense. I don't know for sure in the case of SX, but I do know that the original inspiration for the Celeron was cost recovery. They divided the pentium's cache into (IIRC 2) physical segments that could be individually disabled after the fact. If everything passed, it was a Pentium. If one of the cache segments failed, they'd zap it and package it as a Celeron rather than throw it away.

The same thing happens with bin-sorted CPU speeds. The slow processors are just the ones that couldn't pass the tests at a higher speed.

There's nothing at all wrong with that.

The questionable part is that, of course, once that is in place they DO sometimes derate the bigger or faster CPUs in order to meet required production/demand (that is, they accept a lower margin and de-rate the product rather than loose the sale). That is the reason overclocking (often) works and is also why they are so big on preventing it. It can be seen as a way to artificially inflate margins on the high end.

It's still more questionable when a PC manufacturer disables a processor feature since the CPU is considered a 3rd party part. Far more still since the OEMs rarely point out that they've disabled a feature widely known to exist, so they are effectively deceiving the buyer.

This also happens in other consumer electronics. Sometimes simply cutting a trace (or bridging a cut) will enable high end features on a low end model. Naturally, the manufacturers are really anxious to shut down anyone who provides instructions.

Re:My best guess....

[Bungie]

Why is it that we could run Microsoft Word on such low specs back then (pre-1995), but not today? Why have programs grown so bloated.

Because back then hardware was much more costly and people didn't upgrade it as much. Even a megabyte or two of RAM was an expensive purchase and virtual memory couldn't be used as easily either because disk space was limited too. Software vendors would have to make their products work on as wide a range of systems as possible or else people just wouldn't buy them. Now that hardware is much cheaper it's not as big a deal for someone to go and buy a new piece of hardware or even a whole new computer just to run a piece of sotware.

begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't mean what you think it means. Why do some people (mostly nerds) insist on using this term, when it is obvious they don't know what it means or how to use it?

This must end.

Re:begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

So, this begs the question on how to use "this begs the question".

Re:begs the question

[FauxPasIII]

Example of begging the question:

Q: Provide evidence that the Christian God exists.
A: The Bible proves that God exists. The Bible is a reliable source because it is the word of God.

Re:begs the question

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Circular reasoning works because circular reasoning works...

the pic

the shirt

Re:begs the question

[Bobb Sledd]

Great example. I like it.

Question though. (Just for fun, let me play Devil's Advocate for a minute, I know it's just an example, and I see what you're trying to educate here.)

If the question is "Provide evidence that the Christian God exists", and one definition the dictionary provided for "proof" is "anything serving as such evidence", and then if I provide the Bible as evidence, have I not offered proof?

Let me only slightly change the answer though: "The Bible helps prove God exists. The Bible is a reliable source because it is evidence of the word of God."

Now you may argue that it is not sufficient enough to convince on its own, and I agree... but we're talking purely semantics.

(Why is it important? Because by the dictionary definition, I would then assert that I had not "begged the question.")

Re:begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

Kanye is a Douche

Re:begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

My atheist head just exploded.....

Re:begs the question

[lastgoodnickname]

There are T-Rexes on Saturn. Prove that there's not!

Re:begs the question

[pjt33]

Why do purveyors of prescriptivist poppycock insist that a term means something other than the meaning ascribed to it by the majority of native speakers?

Re:begs the question

[Ipeunipig]

http://www.explosm.net/comics/828/

Re:begs the question

[Bobb Sledd]

The example given on the web site is better:

To quote:

A simple example would be "I think he is unattractive because he is ugly." The adjective "ugly" does not explain why the subject is "unattractive" -- they virtually amount to the same subjective meaning, and the proof is merely a restatement of the premise. The sentence has begged the question.

http://begthequestion.info/

Re:begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

-..by the majority of native speakers

How many people have to be wrong before they are right again?

Re:begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bible is not evidence that God exists. The Bible is evidence that some guys a couple thousand years ago thought God exists.

If we accept the Bible as evidence of God, then we should also be prepared to accept modern historical fiction as evidence of alternate realities. Or Star Trek as evidence of intelligent alien life. Both place (some) events in locations we know to exist. Historical fiction frequently includes figures we know existed, doing things we know they did. That, in no way, makes the other parts of the story factual, of course.

Re:begs the question

[lastgoodnickname]

There's cavemen too! I have proof...http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug

Re:begs the question

[b4dc0d3r]

Proof is a construct of logic, as in a mathematical proof. Science is about observations matching a hypothesis, which results in a testable theory. In order to prove the theory we have to put it to a rigorous test. Therefore, Slashdot has decided that we will strap a helmet-cam to your head and send you to Saturn. The cam is so you don't just lie about the T-Rexes. We will have sufficient evidence at that point to conclude that there is no evidence of T-Rexes on Saturn.

In addition, the only scenario under which that is possible, assuming you're talking about Earth dinosaurs and not Saturn dinosaurs, is that the meteor impact 65 million years ago which has been considered the mass extinction point of most of the dinosaurs actually ejected them into space like a drop of water rebounding from impact onto a placid liquid surface, flying them on space rocks in the same manner that Xenu flung earthlike citizens out on spaceships, only less "techy", puncturing a hexagonal space into the clouds which has been recently seen.

Since I made that theory up just now, I know it to be false, proving that the hexagon on Saturn is not related to dinosaurs. Besides, they would not have been able to survive without atmosphere, even if the space rocks did include enough food for the journey.

Therefore the only evidence pointing to dinos on Saturn is your own unsourced statement, which is not only self-serving but made in the same rhetorical style as arguments that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990, which btw he has refused to deny and actively sought international protection to hide the very website discussing this. The various legal cases surrounding that claim specifically point this out as parody, and in light of the context of your claim it is logical to conclude that the same judicial and intellectual bodies would conclude that your claim too falls under parody.

Parody only happens when what you are saying is not factually true, therefore we can prove through inductive reasoning that your comment is a pardody, and therefore cannot be true. Hence, the statement "There are T-Rexes on Saturn" is inductively proven false, which was to be demonstrated. If you ask me if I've checked every possible square inch of Saturn for a single counter-example, I will point to this post as demonstration that such extreme measures are not required when it has logically been proven not true.

Re:begs the question

[TheBlackSwordsman]

Please, for the love God, mod this up. It seems like not a day goes by that I don't hear someone misuse the phrase "begs the question".

Re:begs the question

[selven]

That begs the question: who cares?

Seriously, meanings change over time, and "begs for the question to be asked" is a perfectly valid interpretation of "begs the question".

Re:begs the question

[FauxPasIII]

At that point it becomes a question about what forms of evidence you'll consider sufficient for a given claim. If you and I were debating and you expressed that the Bible was sufficient evidence for belief in God, then I would hold up a Calvin and Hobbes book as evidence that talking stuffed tigers exist. =)

Or, less frivolously any other "serious" religion's holy text would have to be accepted as evidence of the veracity of the supernatural claims put forth by that text, lest you commit a fallacy of special pleading.

What REALLY begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

Is how we Linux hippies can somehow twist this story in a way that allows us to bash Microsoft. It doesn't matter how delusional the idea, how disconnected from reality, how devoid of fact or reason, WE MUST BASH MICROSOFT.

Re:What REALLY begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

No twisting required.

It appears Microsoft intentionally restricted this feature in an attempt to make customers purchase hardware they did not need.

Is that bashing Microsoft? No, it's just stating a fact. If the fact bashes Microsoft, that's their fault.

Re:What REALLY begs the question

[amliebsch]

Is it bashing Apple to point out that they do they same thing to OSX?

Re:What REALLY begs the question

[JonJ]

I would absolutely love to se sources for this claim.

Re:What REALLY begs the question

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Intentionally restricted? Not exactly. Rough quote from Raymond Chen: "Every feature starts at -100." That is to say, you need more than just a faint "it would be nice" feeling to write a feature. If every helpful feature were implemented, the product wouldn't ship until the end of time, and the testing and support headaches would multiply exponentially. The features needs to be *very* useful or *very* easy to implement. Since most modern CPUs come with virtualization tech, and few programs require XP mode, the cost/benefit analysis says that easier to implement hardware virtualization is worth the time and effort, while software isn't. Simple as that.

Re:What REALLY begs the question

[amliebsch]

I guess I thought it was just common knowledge that Apple intentionally restricts OSX in an attempt to make consumers purchase Apple-branded x86 computers. Do you disagree?

Re:What REALLY begs the question

[OrwellianLurker]

Is it bashing Apple to point out that they do they same thing to OSX?

I constantly see this argument in politics.

Well A did X, so why shouldn't B be able to do X? It doesn't fucking matter, X is still wrong and they should both be criticized.

Re:What REALLY begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

Try and install a current release of iTunes or Safari on a version of OS X 2 point released behind the current one and tell me how it goes.

seems a bit of a conspiracy theory to me

[Anonymous Coward]

could it not just be that they wrote the code initially to be reliant on the hardware functions, in order to (i assume) get decent performance relatively quickly and with (again making assumptions) less overheads, and now they have managed to write a software only version at a similar decent level of performance? it seems to be TFA is just assuming that anything microsoft does is cynical and evil, not just a practical decision

Re:seems a bit of a conspiracy theory to me

[shutdown -p now]

On one hand, XP Mode in 7 actually uses Virtual PC, which has been around for a long time - but didn't require hardware virtualization support until the most recent version.

On the other hand, while I can't find that link now, I do recall seeing one of VPC guys explaining that they went hardware-only for the new release simply because it allowed them to cut out a lot of code, which then no longer needs to be supported. In which case it may be that they have realized that it's a bad idea from business perspective, and put that code back in (and brought it up to date) with that patch.

Re:seems a bit of a conspiracy theory to me

[ShadowRangerRIT]

That was my initial thought as well. Yes, well-written software-only virtualization can perform at a similar level, but if they can get it out the door faster with hardware supported virtualization, they may have decided the software-only approach wasn't worth the resources at the time. It's called prioritization; if they put the resources into software-only virtualization, they neglect something else.

Re:seems a bit of a conspiracy theory to me

[Animats]

On the other hand, while I can't find that link now, I do recall seeing one of VPC guys explaining that they went hardware-only for the new release simply because it allowed them to cut out a lot of code, which then no longer needs to be supported.

Well, yes. x86 "Software virtualization" is an awful hack. All that code examination and patching. Getting rid of that machinery is a big win from the developer perspective.

From a development perspective, you'd like to get rid of 16-bit mode, mixed 16/32 bit mode (very ugly), and software virtualization. Linux, after all, supports none of those legacy modes.

Re:seems a bit of a conspiracy theory to me

[morgan_greywolf]

Also, it's not like hardware virtualization is exceedingly rare, either. On current AMD processors, for example, only the Sempron line doesn't support it. You also don't need to turn it on in the BIOS on AMD processors either: It either has it or it doesn't. It was actually a safe bet. I'm deliberately pointing out AMD's processors here, too, to show that it really couldn't have been a concession to Intel.

Re:seems a bit of a conspiracy theory to me

[iamhigh]

And thus you have defined limited resources... something too many customers, and even employees, do not seem to realize affects "what gets cut" much more than conspiracy and malice. But Alarmist are alive and well in the US and there is a huge group of people that love to follow them.

Re:seems a bit of a conspiracy theory to me

[GWBasic]

In which case it may be that they have realized that it's a bad idea from business perspective, and put that code back in (and brought it up to date) with that patch.

Or it could be that they needed to keep V1 simple, so software virtualization was delayed until V2. That always happens. Move along, nothing to see here.

Re:seems a bit of a conspiracy theory to me

[shutdown -p now]

That's the point - it wasn't really V1. Windows Virtual PC was the third major release (previous ones being Virtual PC 2007 and Virtual PC 2005).

Of course, how much code has actually being reused is a good question. There was some speculation at the time that this is because that release of VPC has included some virtualization code from Hyper-V (which always was, and still remains, hardware-only).

Re:seems a bit of a conspiracy theory to me

[toddestan]

The newest Sempron for Socket AM3 has virtualization support. I think the only reason why the Sempron didn't for a while is because it was based off an older design.

Tag article as randalckennedy

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Tag the article as randalckennedy. At least we can identify obvious FUD for what it is.

The bigger announcement from MS today

[afidel]

The bigger announcement was that they were dropping the stupid VDI licensing thing. Paying an extra $23/year on top of the outrageous fees we already pay for Select and Open licenses just for the privileged of using the desktop OS licenses in a virtual environment was just stupid and I'm very glad it was dropped, might make it a bit easier to find a positive ROI on a VDI project now.

AMD was supported too

[Mekkah]

Clearly it isn't Intel over AMD, it could support both Intel VT and AMD-V. Don't throw out the hate without justification!

ars technica
Thanks for pointing that out ColdWetDog.

Re:AMD was supported too

[asdf7890]

Clearly it isn't Intel over AMD, it could support both Intel VT and AMD-V. Don't throw out the hate without justification!

I think the claimed Intel/AMD distinction is not about which particular set of visualization helper modes were supported - it is about the differences in general availability of the features between the manufacturers. I think *all* recent AMD chips have the relevant support, whereas Intel are still segmenting their market by putting out chips both with and without - see http://news.cnet.com/some-intel-chips-dont-support-windows-7-xp-mode/ for one example of this being discussed.

Randall C. Kennedy

[jwietelmann]

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/02/21/2329249 Windows 7 Memory Usage Critic Outed As Fraud, Subsequently Given Front Page Story on Slashdot for Some Reason

Re:Randall C. Kennedy

[Blakey Rat]

If the editors paid a tenth as much attention to the story as the commentators did, I'll be pissed that they're giving this bozo even more traffic as a reward for passing bullshit off as fact.

Since they don't, I'll instead just have to remain pissed that the editors don't pay a tenth as much attention as the commentators do.

Hint for Slashdotters: anything posted by the Exo Performance Network is pure bullshit. Don't believe a syllable without independent verification.

Re:Randall C. Kennedy

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think Slashdot editors actually RTFA. They just got to the part were Microsoft was criticized and then hit the post button, who cares about the source of the information.

Re:Randall C. Kennedy

[Hal_Porter]

It looks to me as if he's just got a sockpuppet he uses to troll people. Trolling means page views and page views means ad revenue. What's the problem really? He was writing for a bunch of IT trade rags, not the New York Times.

Re:Randall C. Kennedy

[Beelzebud]

I'm really amazed to see this joker being linked to as well.

Gee I dunno

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe at the start they asked the Windows Virtual PC team what their minimum requirements were, and made those the minimum requirements for XP Mode.

Then after a big media dustup, they discover that some of those requirements probably only apply to guest OSes newer than XP. So they spend a lot of time verifying this, and then when they're confident enough that this is true, they make a patch that removes this requirement. But they are clear to point out that this change is only supported when XP is your guest OS. But the minimum requirements for Windows Virtual PC didn't change for other guest OSes.

Naw, couldn't be it. Gotta be some sort of i915 payola connection in there somewhere.

Re:Gee I dunno

[omnichad]

This has nothing to do with the Guest OS. Hardware virtualization acceleration is dependent on the host OS - specifically, the virtual machine software itself.

Re:Gee I dunno

[Anonymous Coward]

This has nothing to do with the Guest OS. Hardware virtualization acceleration is dependent on the host OS - specifically, the virtual machine software itself.

Which, if true, makes it odd that this new method is unsupported for all guest OSes other than XP, doesn't it?

Re:Gee I dunno

[mzs]

Or the update could be patching XP so that it's kernel avoids the troublesome instructions, the way that there patches to linux in the past to allow nearly native speed in qemu. Then it would not need all the essentially an emulator code of the previous vpc versions.

Re:Gee I dunno

[Jeng]

Which, if true, makes it odd that this new method is unsupported for all guest OSes other than XP, doesn't it?

Here, this may answer your questions and get you on the right path.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/support/faq.aspx

Slashdot begs the question

[blueskies]

Why all the begging?

Re:Slashdot begs the question

[slashkitty]

I know. Sometimes you wish that slashdot has a real editor for the homepage.

Re:Slashdot begs the question

[Anonymous Coward]

How die alone in 5 easy steps:

1. Go to college.
2. Major in math/engineering/CS.
3. Take a logic class from the philosophy department so you can blow it off and get an A.
4. Armed with your logic lingo, smugly correct everyone's technical misusage of the phrase "begs the question."
5. This isn't really a step. This is just the part where you die alone.

Re:Slashdot begs the question

[Spatial]

They're bad at cards. Didn't know how to raise.

Re:Slashdot begs the question

[baka_toroi]

Right on the money XD On the other hand, English isn't my native language and I already know I shouldn't use that expression in that way.

Re:Slashdot begs the question

[blueskies]

Luckily, i don't know many people that use that phrase.

non VT runs dog slow

[alen]

i've run the desktop version of VMWare on my laptop and it's very slow compared to the VT version of Windows XP Mode on the same laptop.

it's the same old complaints. people want a feature but if it's not supported in hardware and runs extremely slow they will scream on the internets how stupid microsoft is for making it so slow on 6 year old hardware that otherwise runs Windows 7 very well

Ah, false dichotomies.

[stonecypher]

There are many, many other possibilities than the two derogative possibilities offered. The one which seems most likely to me is that Microsoft thought "well, it's in all new hardware, it probably isn't worth the time and cost of implementing a software solution," only to find out that market demand existed.

Another possibility is that it took them time to produce an implementation of sufficient quality.

Re:Ah, false dichotomies.

[BitZtream]

Unfortunately, the software only thing was the way Virtual PC (which is whats actually being used) until the most recent versions, where they went from software only to hardware only virtually over night for no readily apparent reason other than they could do it.

Re: Randall C. Kennedy who got fired by InfoWorld?

[FrankPoole]

WTF. Seriously? Slashdot is sourcing these jokers? This article is written by the same guy who was pretending to be the CTO of Devil Mountain Software and then got fired by InfoWorld after he was outed. What a tragedy....

For Windows 7 Home Premium?

[Azureflare]

Right now I use VMware player to run an old XP install for some stuff that requires XP, and it works pretty well. Does this patch mean I won't need to do this anymore, or is this patch only available to the windows 7 professional or whatever licenses? Side note: I just recently bought windows 7 home premium and I gotta say, things have improved a lot since XP. I'm a mac user and I think I might actually like windows 7 better (shock, horror). Windows 7 works great on my imac (besides that weird audio stuttering thing that sometimes happens, what is that?)

Re:For Windows 7 Home Premium?

[Azureflare]

Argh, forgot to format. Imagine there's a break before Side note.

Re:For Windows 7 Home Premium?

[jonbryce]

With Home Premium, you will still need to use VMWare or another 3rd party program for your virtualisation requirements. The full version of Virtual PC might work, but XP mode won't. The main difference I suppose is that the other programs don't ship with a copy of Windows XP, whereas XP Mode for Windows 7 Pro and above does. Also, I don't think you get the seamless mode, you have to run XP within the program window, or access it remotely using RDP or VNC.

Re:For Windows 7 Home Premium?

[omnichad]

Officially, it's only available for Windows 7 professional. But I think that's only on the honor system through the download page. It's not "supported" on home premium. Though I've never tried it, since I'm a Mac user too (running XP in VirtualBox and only for IE6,7,8).

Re:For Windows 7 Home Premium?

[plague3106]

Hmm... I don't know if Windows VPC will run on 7 HP. If it does, you'll have to buy a copy of XP to run in it. Win7 Pro and higher come with a license to run XP, no extra cost there. Really, I don't see any reason not to just get 7 pro, has all the features of home + xp mode and other features (bitlocker).

Re:For Windows 7 Home Premium?

[AndrewNeo]

Well actually, XP Mode doesn't ship at all (probably to save space on the retail disk) but has to be downloaded. But the license to use it only comes with Pro and above. Seamless mode is indeed available, though Virtual PC's isn't as good as VMWare's Unity (ironically enough)

Re:For Windows 7 Home Premium?

[Azureflare]

Well, I got it just because I wanted to try it out (and I got a SC2 beta key invite that was windows only.. .curse you blizzard! lol)

I may end up just getting the 60$ upgrade from HP so I can have a better windows experience, but I'm going to see how HP does for a week or so first.

Re:For Windows 7 Home Premium?

[Azureflare]

Btw, kind of a strange place to ask this, but thought you might know since you seem knowledgable: I think I missed the boat on all the features that are in Windows 7, but is there a more full-featured console available in windows 7? CMD feels so clunky after coming from the terminal app in Mac OS X.

Re:For Windows 7 Home Premium?

[StuartHankins]

I'm just curious why you went with Home Premium rather than Pro or Ultimate. I'd think those products would be more suited to the /. crowd. If you're going to use Windows, don't you want to use their "best"?

(And yes I'm really curious, I use XP Pro but not 7. The members of our MIS team who have tried 7 have run into some issues so we haven't adopted it yet. I'm holding out until they have time to pick it apart before I spend any real time on it.)

Re:For Windows 7 Home Premium?

[Anonymous Coward]

is there a more full-featured console available in windows 7? CMD feels so clunky after coming from the terminal app in Mac OS X.

Windows 7 comes with PowerShell which is more featured than CMD. You can also try and download a copy of bash for Windows, there sre a few versions.

Re:totally offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

"really stood out in my mind"

You lie. AC doesn't have a mind for anything to stand out in. Stand - out - in - Wow that makes a lot of sense. Did you listen to yourself as you mouthed those words, before you typed them? Probably not - mouth breathers don't listen to anything, in my experience. Maybe if you have any literate relatives, you should get them to listen to you, before you type stupid shitz on the intartubez.

Oh, BTW - if you're going to gay out on the Taco, maybe you should get a room somewhere. Or, at least take it to the barn.

Tag as improperuseofbeggingthequestion

[fortapocalypse]

read: Begging the question

It's supposed to be disabled by default

[CreamyG31337]

It's to prevent hypervisor based rootkit attacks

https://www.microsoft.com/taiwan/whdc/system/platform/virtual/CPUVirtExt.mspx

  For systems that are destined for a server role (and for only these systems), enable the virtualization extensions. The threat of running malicious code as an administrator on servers is reduced through Windows Server policies and organizational best practices.

  For systems that are destined for a client role, disable (and lock off) the virtualization extensions.

  For systems that might be deployed in either a server or client role (such as high-end workstations), it would be prudent to disable the extensions by default.

Re:It's supposed to be disabled by default

[jawtheshark]

See my post here. Also, this means Microsoft contradicts itself: on one hand the XP Mode required (okay, "required") the hardware virtualization to be enabled, but on the other hand it is recommended to disabled it on client machines... where, go figure, XP Mode is most likely to be used!

I still think it's a lame excuse... AMD chips have it enabled by default.

Re:It's supposed to be disabled by default

[CreamyG31337]

it's not the chip, it's up to the motherboard manufacturer and bios programmer (AWARD, AMI, etc) to set these defaults correctly. My AMD 965 had it disabled by default. Maybe the motherboard would have enabled it if it detected an opteron chip, but I doubt it.

Re:It's supposed to be disabled by default

[Khyber]

No, it is up to the processor manufacturer, whom provides the microcode that runs everything on-die.

INTEL disabled this, not the BIOS manufacturers - they don't have the microcode, Intel does.

Re:It's supposed to be disabled by default

[CreamyG31337]

okay, what? The parent I'm replying to was talking about the bios disabling it on a supported CPU. I suppose you can say Intel and AMD "disabled" this on some of their chips too, but that obviously isn't what we're talking about when we say "disabled by default in the bios"...

Re:It's supposed to be disabled by default

[Anonymous Coward]

INTEL disabled this, not the BIOS manufacturers - they don't have the microcode, Intel does.

What are you talking about? Having the option in the BIOS and turned off by default is entirely up to the manufacturer of the motherboard who ships the BIOS. You don't download all your BIOS updates from Intel. They have no control over what Dell, HP or Asus decide to put as default for their BIOS settings.

Alot of OEM's turn off options like that by default so they can ship the system with either processor (ones that have the feature or cheaper ones that don't) and not have to change the option in the BIOS. It's also safer to leave it off by default and have the user enable it themself if they feel they need it. I've seen vendors do this with other things like HyperThreading or even disk access.

Virtual PC blog

[shutdown -p now]

Explanation of this decision from Virtual PC blog:

Why is Microsoft making this change to Virtual PC now?

Because of you :-) We have heard loud and clear from customers that they need to be able to run Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode on systems that do not have hardware virtualization support. So we are going to enable this.

Why did Microsoft release Windows Virtual PC without this in the first place?

There are two main reasons here.

The first is that we believe that customers will get the best virtualization experience on computers with hardware virtualization support. This has not changed – and even though we are releasing this update I would strongly encourage anyone who is looking at buying a new computer, and intends to use virtualization, to make sure that they get a system that is capable of supporting hardware virtualization.

The second is that we had hoped that by the time Windows Virtual PC released – hardware virtualization support would be prevalent enough that this would not be an issue. We were wrong on that. Bummer.

Re:Virtual PC blog

[cbhacking]

This comes pretty close to what I heard from a guy who worked on the Windows virtualization team about 9 months ago. I posted about it here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1584998&cid=31505036 but basically the gist was that when they were developing the next Virtual PC version (started over 3 years ago), they asked Intel and AMD if they would have hardware assisted virtualization on all CPUs by then. Both companies said yes, so MS decided to save time and testing costs by removing the code that handles non-hardware-assisting CPUs.

At the time, Win7 hadn't quite even shipped yet, but he said they were considering adding the support back in after release, to make up for Intel screwing the pooch. Sounds like that's what happened.

coward

[Anonymous Coward]

I have other news for you: Windows 7 works fine with non-fully acpi compailant bios'es! You just have to replace the "broken" bootloader with something that works after the install "fails". Even the install disk's repair mode fixes things ;] My own experiance. Just another M$ bullshit ;]

So, if they published a patch

[Pop69]

Is there a link to it anywhere ?

I actually rtfa and there's no sign of one. I really can't be bothered searching MS site to find one as the CPU on this machine has VT on CPU and enabled in BIOS

Gah, politics

[Anonymous Coward]

One reason I'm glad I don't use Windows is because I don't have to get caught on the short end of the bullshit politics stick. Even if something shitty happens with my favorite distro/browser/app, there's others to choose from.

Re:Gah, politics

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all in the way it's presented. MS changes something in their "distro" and suddenly there is a conspiracy, a Linux distro changes and people are discussing the "virtues" of the change. The blurb could have stated this change in several ways without fudging any of the facts and the entire feel of what was being conveyed would have taken on a different light.

To act like OSS doesn't have politics that rival closed source is either naive or trollish.

Hardware virtualization is simpler...

[Pr0xY]

The answer is probably that hardware virtualization is simply easier to implement. MS wanted to get the feature out of the door and to customers. They probably expect that a large number of Windows 7 users are on newer hardware likely to have VT. Then later updated the software to support software based virtualization in order to allow it to function for more people.

Adding features (in this case software virtualization support) through updates is hardly newsworthy...

Link to update (KB977206)

[youngec]

Yes, it is the same KB that was leaked back around January, KB977206.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=977206

Re:Link to update (KB977206)

[Pop69]

The one that says this in it ?

"Important This update supports only Windows XP Service Pack 3 virtual machines."

Makes sense too

[Sycraft-fu]

Really, I'd say if you don't have a chip that supports VT/AMD-V you don't really want to be using XP mode. It is going to be all kinds of slow. This is partially because VT speeds up virtualization but also because it implies an older CPU. After all, ALL Core 2s and up have VT, as do some Pentium Ds. You want a reasonable amount of hardware to run Windows 7 and then run XP on top of it. I don't think that this was an unreasonable requirement.

However, some people seem to think they should be able to do all the latest crap with old computers and bitched, so MS is giving them what they wanted. Now they'll just bitch that it is too slow.

Ars has a much better write up

[Orange Crush]

With actual links so you can download the patch to enable XP mode on previously unsupported processors, for instance:
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/microsoft-removes-vm-hardware-requirements-from-xp-mode.ars
Why the hell is this Exo-Blog post being cited? The author of TFA doesn't cite a goddamn thing.

Re:Ars has a much better write up

[julesh]

Why the hell is this Exo-Blog post being cited? The author of TFA doesn't know a goddamn thing.

FTFY.

Begs != raises

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The phrase "begs the question" does not mean "raises the question", or "makes us ask the question", though lots of people are using it in that sense. Begs the question means, it assumes the as true what it intends to prove. The Latin phrase "petitio principii" means, the answer (or the answerer) begs (petitions) the questioner to be accepted as true, to concede what is being contested.

But this mistake is so common, so many people are using it this way, it is high time we start de linking "begs the question" from "petitio principii".

Re:Begs != raises

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not a mistake. Languages evolve. Keep up or get left behind.

Re:Begs != raises

[Jeng]

So the only way to understand why "begs the question" does not mean "raises the question" is because of how someone in history mis-translated the original latin?

Rather than complain about the current usage of "begs the question" how about re-translating "petito principii"?

Re:Begs != raises

[value_added]

Rather than complain about the current usage of "begs the question" how about re-translating "petito principii"?

You expect Latin to evolve in the same way English evolves? Sorry, mate. Latin and the people who wrote and spoke it have been dead a long time. You'll have as much luck changing their minds as you would removing the nail from that dead parrot and getting him to perch more comfortably.

Kudos to the OP for an intelligent post.

Re:Begs != raises

[noidentity]

Someone on Slashdot cleared this up a while back, in an elegant way. "Begging the question" (intransitive) is just a special case of "begging the question of ..." (transitive), where the implied object of the intransitive form is the question the debate was meant to answer, but ended up begging.

Re:Begs != raises

[Jeng]

You expect Latin to evolve in the same way English evolves?

I expect Latin to stay the same, but someone along the way went and tried to translate some latin to english, and they failed. So now there is an English phrase that has a meaning that does not match up to the words used. I expect people to re-evaluate what things that were done in the past to see if they match up with the present or the future.

The whole "begs the question" debate is that many people want to use the phrase literally, while others have attached a very weird meaning to that collection of words. Is there any wonder why there is confusion?

Re:Begs != raises

[Jonathan A]

It is not a mistake. Languages evolve. Keep up or get left behind.

Well, "kkjs iie;;slkdk, skkdjie skkkd;wporuvm" to you, then!

Re:Begs != raises

[Anonymous Coward]

From now on, each time I read "begs the question" on Slashdot, I will think of you. I will think of you as you shake your head reading it yourself. I will think of you as you type out a well-reasoned, articulate response. I will think of you as you instruct us in the historical meaning of 'petitio principii'. And I will think of you as people continue on as they always have, and ignore you.

Know that I don't wish you any malice. I'm simply a sadist. It is my nature.

Re:Begs != raises

[Dracophile]

Why give in to ignorance? It may feel (and sometimes smell) like pushing shit uphill with a pointy instrument, but simply giving in to the "the languages changes, get over it" schtick allows it to excuse any example of ignorance. We already have an expression that means "which raises the question". It's "which raises the question". Why is it necessary to usurp another expression that is useful for meaning something else altogether, and thus take away an expression that means something else altogether, when with a trivial effort the proper "raises the question" phrase can be used to mean "raises the question"?

I know you want to de-link "begs the question" from "petitio principii", but there are two problems with that. One is that you could simply start speaking Latin at people, and they won't understand you: I certainly wouldn't. The other is that once you permit the ignorant to usurp one usage, they'll simply do it again, and next time it'll be your brand new phrase that you invented to mean "petitio principii". And then you have the same problem all over again; rinse and repeat.

Re:Begs != raises

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

We are fighting a losing battle here, Draco. It is mob rule by the ignorami.

Non issue, went with AMD

[Anonymous Coward]

The myriad of processors from Intel was just two much to deal with. I bought AMD and never looked back. Until Intel get's it act together on the VT, I'll be recommending AMD.

Yes, that one

[youngec]

What that statement means is that the XP Mode VM must be SP3.

Re:totally offtopic

[lastgoodnickname]

I'm an elbow breather.

Works in VMWare ESX Now

[qamerr]

For convenience I had wanted to test XP Mode in Windows 7 on a quick install running on top of VMWare's ESX.. but I couldn't because it required the hardware virtualization. I just installed the patch and it worked, I can now test XP mode on my virtual Win7, nice.

I got the udpate from here:
For 32-bit host operating systems: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=837f12aa-1d37-464e-ae59-20c9ecbebaf6
For 64-bit host operating systems: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e70dd043-e262-43c0-a002-446567f1e2b4

(Via: http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2010/03/18/windows-virtual-pc-no-hardware-virtualization-update-now-available-for-download.aspx)

Re:totally offtopic

[trapnest]

"really stood out in my mind" makes perfect sense. Shut up troll.

attack of the grammer Nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

Does any of that mean that MS didn't force HAV on endusers in order to boost sales of high-end Intel hardware ?

utterly priceless crapola ..

[Anonymous Coward]

What a total load of retrospective ass covering crapola ;)

a pretend Linux 'hippy' wrote

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is how we Linux hippies can somehow twist this story in a way that allows us to bash Microsoft. It doesn't matter how delusional the idea, how disconnected from reality, how devoid of fact or reason, WE MUST BASH MICROSOFT"

What's delusional about MS lying about the specs. The last time they lied to Intel regarding the Vista Capable campaign. I figure the 'Linux hippies' you refer to consists of no one but yourself. Now back to the sixties, dude ;)

this BS has been posted 3 time already

[Anonymous Coward]

"well, it's in all new hardware, it probably isn't worth the time and cost of implementing a software solution"

I think we're all now fully on msg ;)

Some external force prevented Microsoft evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has tens of thousands of employees. It the company really so limited that it must think about every feature that way? I don't think so.

I think the original decision was part of an attempt to force people away from using Windows XP. I'm guessing that some big commercial customers voiced extreme annoyance about that.

So, maybe this is just a normal Microsoft story. The company was, as usual, against the common good. Some external force prevented Microsoft from doing as much evil as it would have liked.

Re:Some external force prevented Microsoft evil.

[ShadowRangerRIT]

Riiight... Creating a feature that works on 90% of modern computers to enable backwards compatibility with an older OS is trying to force people to stop using said older OS. Stop and think for a moment. If those people's computers don't support virtualization, that would be an incentive *not* to upgrade. Your premise is moronic.

CPU-bound or not?

[tepples]

Except if it takes a longer time to run your task at lower speeds

Only if the task is CPU-bound. For a task that's memory-bound or disk-bound or network-bound or human-bound, Turbo Off could be a win. But you're right that things like the backlight don't scale the same way.

Laptops

[tepples]

When you can buy a brand new PC with 2 gigabytes and 2 gigahertz, and it only costs $300

Since when does a new laptop with 2 GB RAM and 2 GHz CPU cost 300 USD? I thought Microsoft was still limiting cheap "ULCPC" Windows licenses to smaller CPU and RAM.

Re:Laptops

[Mr2001]

Here's a laptop with 2 GB and 2.2 GHz for $329.

Yo dawg

[sagematt]

So I heard you liked virtualization...

A little too late for me

[garnkelflax]

I have a Vaio AR870. One of the reasons I bought it (besides the 1920x1200 screen) was because it had the core 2 duo and the processor supported HAV. Behold the day I intalled windows 7 and tried to get XP Mode working to support all my clients that refuse to move beyond 1999 technology. No HAV enabled. No setting in the bios to change it. Sony's custom bios interface doesn't expose the HAV setting and their stance is that they will only be creating bios updates for selected machines. I created a DOS boot CD and I had to dump the bios, hex edit it, and reflash by hand. A sphincter tightening moment to say the least. It all worked and I didn't brick my laptop. But I was irritated during the original attempt when I found out that if HAV wasn't enabled you couldn't install.

Is There Really a Big Use for This?

[dthardcore]

I'm just wondering if there is really widespread use of this feature? Personally I don't run too much older software but I can see that it might have uses for some businesses that have older versions of propriety software that may need this. But really I am just interested to know if anyone has/knows of some software that requires this to be able to run properly. If so some examples would be appreciated. Also IMO I would choose to use VMWare over VirtualPC any day. In my experience with using a variety of Virtualization solutions, I have become a big fan of not only how well VMWare products run, (speed, stability), but also their support is fantastic. My favorite product is ESX server. I recommend this to any business that requires constant uptime. being able to migrate a virtual machine such as an exchange server to another server almost instantly in the case of hardware failure or other issue with the server, with only a couple second interruption in service is fantastic. Every company owes it to themselves to at least evaluate what ESX server may be able to do for them.

It works if you bring your own XP

[Mr2001]

I've successfully installed Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 Home Premium. You have to tell the web site you're using Professional or Ultimate in order to download it, but once you set it up, you can install your own copy of XP and run it just fine. In fact, once you install the Virtual PC integration features in the guest OS, it works just like the "real" XP Mode - floating windows, start menu integration, etc.

It certainly doesn't "beg the question" ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Which begs the question: Why the bizarro requirement in the first place?"

No, it doesn't. We need to rid ourselves of the idiotic misuse of this logical technical term. Educate oneself: begthequestion.info

You didn't think carefully.

[Futurepower(R)]

"Your premise is moronic."

You didn't think carefully. Microsoft was forced to make an XP compatibility mode. Otherwise that would require corporate users to re-write some of their software before migrating to Windows XP.

But, possibly the intent of not making the XP compatibility mode work with most older computers was to try to force a hardware upgrade. Remember, we are not Microsoft's customers. Computer makers are Microsoft's customers. Computer makers want to force as many people as possible to buy new computers. Microsoft wants to force as many people as possible to buy new computer so that they will buy another copy of Windows.

How about the Windows hardware virtualization bug?

[mbourgon]

Every few times I run XP mode, I get a message that my computer cannot run it, that my computer does not have hardware virtualization support. Turning the computer completely OFF (a reboot does not do it) will fix it, but it is a problem. Maybe this is a workaround until they can fix it?

Drive opportunities

[Anonymous Coward]

You need new hardware to run this software. Make it arbitrary! Then after driving hardware sales (faster hardware makes iffy software look 'faster' even if the software is much slower than the 'old' software). Then after all of the money has been made and the market is saturated, remove the arbitrary requirements to 'backfill' the market. Suddenly, no new hardware is required. Software sales without hardware sales. If you are running a near monopoly, you can screw people left and right, and since most customers are too scared or stupid to even think about changing, the monopoly continues. When people ask about changing, they ask one vendor for advice ....one they are contemplating leaving.... and they always (surprise) get the message from that one vendor that the other guys are bad bad bad, complete with words like 'you better not' and 'unavailable' and other nonsense. Imagine that!

Hardware Virtualization off in BIOS for security

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

Remember "Blue Pill" - the hardware-virtualization-based root kit proof? Turning off HV prevents that type of root kit from being installed. Actually, not a bad idea. Keep it off unless it is needed.

Aren't You the Pedant

[ratboy666]

In common English, as practiced by most people "begs the question" no longer means "petitio principii". It now means "this information begs that a question be asked, that wasn't".

Of course, we are in a transition. "Begs the question" in taken as logical fallacy by some, and as colloquial expression by others.

There is a perfectly reasonable expression used to replace "Begs the question" -- circular reasoning.