Vlad Hrybok's Tech Notes

If it takes too long to redraw the screen when you access your remote virtual machine using VmWare Server Console or Microsoft Virtual Server admin page, consider terminaling into your virtual machines using Remote Desktop or Terminal Server client. UI works as fast as with any "real" remote PC. Entry-level Windows XP Home and Vista Home don't support Remote Desktop, but all Pro, Business, Media Center Edition and other flavors of Windows Vista, XP and 2003 work just fine. One of my co-workers told me Remote Desktop can be used for VmWare Workstation access, but I also tested VmWare Server and Microsoft Virtual Server R2, and those two also do it.

To enable Remote Desktop access a few things usually need to be done:

1. Enable RD access:

2. Ensure your user account is a member of the Administrators group.
3. The password on your user account is not blank.

The only issue I had with this setup was sometimes I couldn't ping the virtual machine due to networking issue. But when that happens all attempts to access that virtual machine over the LAN fail, including NetBIOS file shares, web access - anything.

I need to test my software on a variety of 64-bit Windows versions. I hoped I would be able to use Microsoft Virtual Server, which I've been successfully using for a while for 32-bit tests (including German, Russian and Korean flavors of Windows - quite a feat for a Ukrainian with English as a second language), but to no avail - at this point even latest MS Virtual Server is unable to host 64-bit guest operating systems. So despite enjoying being lazy, I was forced to check out free VmWare Server. I hoped to run it on my main Vista x64 dev box, but VmWare Server did not install correctly on Vista x64. That was quite a setback for my product delivery schedule, because I realized I needed another box with 64-bit Windows 2003 Server on it to be sure I could run VmWare Server. I dug through my closet with PC parts and after combining what I had with $200 worth of parts bought from NewEgg.com I had a modest 64-bit box with Pentium D 805 and 1GB of DDR memory. VmWare has installed without a problem, but when I attempted to install Windows XP x64 VmWare Server told me that my Pentium D CPU is no good because when it comes to Intel CPUs, 64 bit guest OSes can run only on EMT64 units with Virtualization Technology (VT) support! Fortunately, my dev desktop had Core 2 Duo E6300, which does have VT support, and both Pentium D and Core 2 Duo use the same LGA 775 package, so I was able to simply swap CPUs and ta-da! - after that VmWare finally started cooperating and is installing XP x64 guest OS as I'm typing this article.

Conclusion: If you want to run 64-bit guest OS in VmWare using Intel CPU you will need a box with a processor supporting Virtualization Technology, and run Windows 2003 x64 as a host OS.

Norton Ghost 9 does not work on Vista. That's a diagnosis that could have stopped me from using Vista altogether. However, I found that Vista's Backup & Restore center does what it's supposed to, with some caveats.
I skimmed through the Internet trying to find answers to a few questions that bothered me:
1. Is it possible to restore system using Vista setup DVD and the OS image on the external drive?
2. Is backed up image compressed?
3. Is it possible to restore system to a partition or volume of the size that does not match the original OS partition size?

I was surprised to find that information I was able to find on the topic was just derivative from Microsoft marketing material. Here's what I found.

1. Yes. all you need to have to restore your system is Vista DVD and the backup image on any kind of media. Just boot from Vista DVD and then follow the lead of these screenshots:






2. Image is slightly compressed - not nearly as much as Ghost did. Original size was 35 GB, backup image size was 28 GB. I had to upgrade my external backup drive to ensure Vista backups can be handled from now on. Another interesting thing is that core of the backup image is a file with .vhd extension - the same used by MS Virtual Server. I wonder if it will be possible run saved OS VHD image in MS Virtual Server.

3. This is the worst part. Restore completely removed all the partition information on the target drive. My target drive had two partitions: first for the restored OS was not formatted and was larger than original OS partition from which the image was made. Second partition had a formatted volume with some information on it. Before restoration started it asked whether is it OK to delete all information "on drive C:", without specifying what drive C: means. I assumed it's an unformatted partition, because formatted one was present and had another letter. Boy, was I wrong. Apparently what Vista called "drive C:" was actually physical disk 0, thank you very much. Vista's Restore completely re-partitioned the drive to make destination partition of the same size as the original one. This is the most destructive Restore utility I have ever seen. After restoration was over, I had to use Disk Manager's rudimentary knock-off of the Partition Magic utility that allowed me to extend the destination partition to the desired size. Of course, I had to re-create second partition and restore the information from the backup copy. So please MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR DESTINATION DRIVE before using Vista Restore function!

Microsoft Virtual Server R2 SP Beta works really well on Vista x64 and Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 CPU, which has Virtualization support. Installer was not completely hands-off - I had to add CGI module to IIS7 manually - otherwise VSWebApp.exe was treated as downloadable file and not as CGI module. MS needs to update VS installer to automate this step.

Please note that although MS Virtual Server R2 Beta can run on Vista x64, it can't host 64-bit OSes. To host 64 bit OSes you would need free VmWare Server installed on x64 Windows 2003 Server, and either AMD 64 bit CPU or Intel EMT64 CPU with Virtualization Technology (VT) support (like Core 2 Duo E6300 or E6400 CPUs).