Now that my demonstration laptop has been rebuilt using the Windows 7 Release Candidate, I need to get my standard virtual machines up and running for a demonstration tomorrow. After a bit of pondering I decided to give Windows Virtual PC a go instead of Virtual PC 2007.
In case anyone is interested I thought I’d share my experience here.
I started with a freshly install Windows 7 RC (x64) on my Lenovo T61P laptop and followed these steps.
- Download the beta release of Windows Virtual PC. (This is the latest one for Windows 7)
- Install Windows Virtual PC and reboot when prompted
- I expanded a fresh copy of the VSTS2008SP1-VPC onto my laptop HDD
- To start Windows Virtual PC, select Windows Virtual PC from the Start menu and choose Virtual Machines
- In the folder that appeared I chose Create virtual machine from the menu bar
- In the Create a virtual machine dialog box I entered “VSTS2008SP1-VPC” and pointed the Location to the folder I had placed the VSTS2008SP1-VPC.vhd in before clicking Next.
- I allocated 2048Mb RAM and pointed to the existing VHD file before clicking Create
- I then chose to Start the Virtual machine by selecting the virtual machine and clicking Open
- Once the virtual machine started I chose to install the Virtual PC Integration Components.
- As you start the Virtual PC Integration Components install, make sure you IGNORE any Found New Hardware Wizard dialog boxes.
* In case you need to know, it is CTRL+ALT+to release the mouse from the virtual machine window. - Once the Setup Completed message appears, click Finish and restart the Virtual Machine when prompted.
* During this step I did get once error dialog box appear which disappeared promptly as the VM rebooted - After the reboot the virtual machine, use the CTRL+ALT+END keystroke to bring up the logon dialog box
- I logged in as the TFSSetup account and checked the event viewer. The event logs were clear of any red STOP messages but while looking through the logs I had the Found New Hardware Wizard dialog reappear and prompt me for the drivers to the Sound Blaster 16 card. I also needed to mount the Windows 2003 R2 ISO to install the Virtual USB Hub driver which appeared to error on install.
I’m publishing this to my blog before I have had much of a chance to test the VPC running under Windows Virtual PC but I have opened VSTS and connected to TFS without any problems. Switching back and forth between windows view and full screen worked well. I haven’t tried out the USB support in the virtual machine yet but I’m sure I’ll be trying it out soon.