8×10Gallery.com

Archive for the ‘Windows OS’ Category

I’ve been working on the new machine and I have to say the frustration level has gone through the roof a couple of times. However, after much gnashing of teeth and vulgarities that embarrass even me, I figured out the problem. My mind has always been my Achilles heel and in this case it was more than evident.

It seems that both Windows and the AMD motherboard aren’t too keen on the two video cards I put in my new system. Although they are both recognized and the drivers were loaded, the second card was causing some problems and the machine would repeatedly freeze. The mouse would still move, but nothing would respond when you clicked on it. After dozens of reboots and threats of sending the machine back to Dell (in pieces) or at least out the window, I took a moment to pause and reflect on the situation. I’m not sure where my happy place is, but I was searching for it.

I eventually turned off the second video card through Device Manager and low and behold the problem went away. (That’s what you get for thinking!) Funny, this same config worked perfectly under Windows XP and a Dell Dimension, both of which are at least 5 years old. But alas, the modern hardware and modern OS soils itself and can’t make it work.

Disappointing to be sure, but at least I have two monitors working and the stupid thing isn’t locking up all the time. I’ll have to figure out how to get that card back up and running. I do have the drivers loaded for both cards, but there might be a BIOS setting I need to check. You know me, I just put both cards in there and turned the thing on. Why would I bother to check any settings? Manual? What manual?

I pressed on and got quite a few apps reinstalled, and with the video issue worked out the machine runs very well. Apps load very quickly although every time there was a slight hesitation I thought the machine had lost its mind again. But I have my photo and video apps back in place as well as the insanely bloated Office 2007.

It’s funny how the only 64bit app I have is Lightroom. It’s still a 32bit world out there. Although seriously, is a 64bit version of Word even necessary? Is copy and paste really going to be noticeably faster?

I also spent a ton of time rooting through old directories deleting files I haven’t touched since 2004. I’m pretty sure that HMTL 1.0 tutorial isn’t going to do me much good these days. I found old apps and zip files I didn’t even think I had. Who knows what else I’m going to find?

There’s still a long way to go before I feel comfortable with this machine. Codecs are still missing and there’s all those little apps you forget about until you need them. But, at the least the machine is running and I got my own stupidity in check. At least for now.

All I wanted to do was load up my virtual machines from Virtual PC 2007 into Virtual PC for Windows 7. No my friends, it’s not that simple.

What used to be a simple install of VPC additions to get copy/paste and other functionality to work is now multiple steps and has to be done for each VM you decide to work with. Maybe I wouldn’t have to do this if I built the images from scratch, but I don’t see a reason not to use my existing VMs. And no , I can’t just use the XP mode, I need a custom built VM. As stupid as it sounds I need IE6.

So here’s my latest frustration with Windows 7 and trying to get something simple to work.

Even though VPC 2007 doesn’t need it, Windows 7 requires hardware virtualization. That was annoying since you have to download a separate tool to get Windows to tell you it needs to be turned on. Clearly putting it into the actual installer escaped their minds. This kind of stupidity is a reason not to upgrade to Win7.

But moving on…

We had a slew of problems getting our old VMs to load correctly under Win7. We kept getting errors that Win7 couldn’t write to the disk even though we could copy files into all the directories we listed in the UI. This happened on two machines with identical hardware. On a third machine (mine) we didn’t run into that problem. That issue still exists, we just moved forward using different hardware.

The VMs actually loaded correctly on my machine and surprisingly started without incident. I thought we were in the clear. I was so terribly mistaken. Starting them is one thing, using them is another.

You need to install the new Virtual PC Integration Features for Windows 7. That’s no problem, I expected that. But it’s not quite that simple.

Here’s what I ended up doing…

Upgrade the Integration Features and reboot

The next time the machine comes up, it asks to install them again (did I miss an option somewhere?)

After the 2nd install don’t reboot, there is a little dialog box saying you need to go to website to download yet more components. (Maybe I missed it the first time, but I’ve since done it again and haven’t seen it at the end of the first install).

Download this RDP feature and reboot again.

Funny thing, after doing all this you don’t actually have the full functionality of Win7 VPC. Nothing is enabled yet. I find this all very annoying and very much the reverse of VPC 2007.

You have to enable the Integration Features and that means you have to be using a machine which has a username and password. This isn’t how I set up my machine since it’s a test box. I don’t want to have to mess with password in this environment. So you have to add a password for your sandbox environment and then you can actually use the copy and paste functions. Good Lord.

Finally, make sure you actually save the VM with these new settings in place or else you’ll have to do it all over again (which happened to me). None of this is tied to VPC, it’s all a part of the VM itself.

I’m sorry, but this is a hell of a lot of work for something that used to work without issue in the previous Virtual PC version. For VPC 2007 it was just install the extensions and everything worked. You could resize the window, copy and paste, and move between the host and guest machine. Now, there’s just too many damn hoops. Windows 7 Virtual PC is NOT better than the previous version.

So you could go through all that mess

OR

You could follow the steps in this article (make sure to read the comments for some clarifications on what to remove) to get rid of Win 7 VPC and install VPC 2007 onto Windows 7.

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2009/08/19/running-virtual-pc-2007-on-windows-7.aspx

I suppose the best course of action is to make a copy of the VHD file before tinkering with it, since I am damn sure once you save it with these changes there is no way in hell it will open in VPC 2007 again.

This is a whole lot of bullshit to get some USB support.

And we only have this working on one machine, two out of the three machines can’t load the previous VHD files. 66% failure rate, nice.

Windows 7, why do you disappoint me so?

I upgraded my machine to Windows 7 and I have to say I am completely underwhelmed by it. Based on all the hype I was expecting bells and whistles, clowns and balloons. From where I sit, Windows 7 is the same as Vista with all those same annoying dialogs and poor design issues. Since it’s nearly 2010 the fact you can’t stretch the taskbar across multiple monitors is, well, stupid. Why is it Windows can’t actually open an ISO file? I believe I have more cause to open it to see the files than I do to burn it to a disc. And in what year will MS actually make a Windows Explorer that’s actually worth using? Yet again, the built-in file manager is pitiful!

Just for the record, breadcrumbs really aren’t that cool.

Maybe Win 7 is better with resources and memory management. Right now I can’t say its better at rendering the desktop. Maybe my videocard is weak, but it’s just a desktop I shouldn’t have to have a gaming card just to render some icons on it.

So you may ask if I don’t like it why did I upgrade? Well, after being stuck on other bastard child of the operating system world, Window XP 64-bit, I just couldn’t stand it anymore and even the problematic Win 7 seemed like Nirvana comparatively. Nothing runs on XP64 and it was abandoned right after launch, just like that troubled teen Windows Me. Apps complain relentlessly that they aren’t compatible and finding 64-bit drivers for XP is like finding an honest politician, they just don’t exist.

The only bright spot so far has been the setup, which I will admit is very impressive. It was very quick and all the components were recognized. Of course installing 300+MB of patches right after install was less than thrilling, especially since Win 7 has only been out two months, but I would rather have the patches than my ass hanging out on the web for all to see.

It took less than half the business day to install the OS and reinstall all the apps. That alone is pretty striking. It’s still Vista, but that’s a step up from where I’ve been. However, there is no way this OS is worth the $150 upgrade price.