May 17
Windows 7 RC1 Virtual PC beta - Integration Features (Windows Server 2008 guest)
The new beta version of Windows Virtual PC feels kinda nice but is a little unpredictable.
A few key points I have come to learn:
- Server 2008 does not appear to be a supported guest OS. But it does seem to work ok for me thus far.
- There is sparse documentation it appears (as in none at this stage).
- Virtual PC 2007 and the new beta version cannot co-exist on Windows7.
- Integration features are flakey at best with server 2008, mapping to a share from the host to the guest is slloooooowwww as a work around.
- I found upon startup that the enabling integration features screen would drag out for a few minutes and sometimes show an error dialog but the VPC would still open and be functional, but no VPC integration of course even though the VPC itself thinks integration features are active, the Tools menu shows the option to enable integration features greyed out indicating the features are active.
- I was able to get integration features working once the guest has started by opening the services applet and restarting the “Virtual PC Integration Components” service. This step reactivates the Enable PC Integration features in the tool menu which subsequently allows drives to be used from the host in My Computer.
The new version seems nicely integrated with Windows7 and seems to be less aggressive with system resources; possibly quicker to start up and suspend and I like the full screen mode which is more like RDP, however you can no longer drag files between the host and guest desktops like you can with VPC2007, hence PC integration features are pretty important. Anyway its looking good but there seems to be room for improvement at this early stage; otherwise this is a useable beta.
John Hodgson
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