Archive for the ‘Workstation’ Category

VMWare: Windows 7 USB installation disk

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

In my previous post I created a USB installation disk with Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool. Now I am going to use the USB disk to install my systems but also I can use this media to install my virtual machines. VMWare Workstation 6.5 or lower does not support to boot from USB removable disks, but there is a workaround to achieve that.

Start VMWare Workstation and open the properties of your VM; than create new virtual harddisk and use the physical partition of the inserted USB disk. In following screenshots you can see what I did to get this done:

2009-12-16_1210302009-12-16_121040 2009-12-16_121049 2009-12-16_121056 2009-12-16_121103 Windows 7 setup Windows 7 setup Windows 7 setup Windows 7 setup Windows 7 setup Windows 7 setup

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in VMWare, Workstation | 1 Comment »

VMWare : Workstation 7 first impression

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

VMWare has updated their client virtualization platform and released the VMWare Workstation 7 release.

Why upgrade?

  • Ultimate Desktop Virtualization Product for Windows 7
  • Best 3D Graphics Just Got Better with for support Windows Aero in Windows Vista and Windows 7 virtual machines
  • Most Advanced Virtualization Platform with up to 4 virtual processors or 4 virtual cores and up to 32GB of memory per virtual machine.
  • Features Professionals Cannot Live Without for installing and running VMware vSphere 4 and VMware ESXi in a virtual machine
  • Protect from Prying Eyes  with 256-bit AES encryption.

Why Choose VMware Workstation? Check out this cool video from the VMWare site.

 

image

The wow experience with the latest release. The guys from VMWare did great job!

The encryption feature:

image

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3D graphics

image

Just check it out. I am going to test the VMWare 4 hypervisor installation soon.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in VMWare, Workstation | No Comments »

Windows 7: VMWare Workstation

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

Finally after 2,5 year Vista was released I can say “WOW” with the first public beta of Windows 7. The installation process was and went smooth. I installed one VM and two physical machines. The setup went fine on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M57 and on my ASUS home system. I am looking forward to see the latest version released.

What’s new in Windows 7?

  • Improved taskbar and full-screen previews
  • Jump Lists
  • New ways to work with Windows
  • Internet Explorer 8
  • Windows Live
  • Better device management
  • HomeGroup
  • Faster, more responsive performance
  • Extended battery life
  • Theme packages reflect your style
  • Take control of problems
  • Share music and videos
  • Windows Touch
  • Handwriting recognition additions
  • AppLocker
  • Bitlocker with enhanced usb encryption
  • etc

If you didn’t download it than I suggest browsing to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx and get the bits. Anyway I wanted to share my first experience with installing and playing with VMWare Workstation Version: 6.5.1 Build: 126130 and Windows 7 beta. It’s simple as it should. Plug and play ;-)

The installation went smooth and in minutes I was able to run my VMs and all without hassle. I moved from Vista to Ubuntu and in the end I installed Windows XP as my desktop OS.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Windows 7, Workstation | No Comments »

VMWare Workstation: high-speed USB 2.0 support vm

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

Since couple days I am running Windows XP x64 and I wanted to scan some documents with my old Canon Lide scanner which is connected by USB cable on the host. Drivers are not supported in Windows XP x64 and therefore I am using a Windows XP 32bit virtual machine.

After connecting the scanner in Removable Devices I get the message below: 

  • Please upgrade your virtual machine to enable high-speed USB 2.0 support for the device “Canon CanoScan”. An attempt will be made to connect this device to the best available host controller. This may result in an undefined behavior for this deviceVMWare-Workstation-Warning-USB-2.
I did some research on the Internet and found some interesting posts. It looks like the virtual machine has an older version which does not support USB 2.0.  I opened the vmx file with Notepad++and checked the virtualHW.version which was set to 4; the virtual machine has VMWare Workstation 4 hardware compatibility version set.
VMWare-Workstation-hwversion
There are two ways to change the version:
  • Shutdown the virtual machine; click VM in the menu and choose “Upgrade or Change version”; follow the wizard and choose VMWare Workstation 6/6.5
  • Open the vmx file in Notepad and change virtualHW.version = “6.0″ and add ehci.present = “TRUE” to the configuration.
Getting done is how the virtualization at least helps me here. Scanner is now working.
VMWare-Workstation-Canon

Posted in Workstation | 3 Comments »

VMware Workstation 6.04 linux x64 unrecoverable error

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

I am running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition 64bit edition and after I installed VMWare Workstation 6.04 Linux x64 edition I got the following error when trying to start my virtual machines sitting on a NTFS USB disk volume.

VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0)
Failed to allocate page for guest RAM!
A log file is available in “/media/USB_DATA/NET-DC-01/vmware.log”.  Please request support and include the contents of the log file.
To collect data to submit to VMware support, select Help > About and click “Collect Support Data”. You can also run the “vm-support” script in the Workstation folder directly.
We will respond on the basis of your support entitlement.

image

Please click OK and locate the vm file. Open the vmx file with nano or another text editor and add the setting below. Save the file and try to start the virtual machine again.

mainMem.useNamedFile = “FALSE”

This setting doesn’t use named-file – use for VMs on USB-disks or other slow disks
Windows: useNamedFile= “FALSE” causes memory to be backed by the host’s swap space.
Linux: useNamedFile= “FALSE” causes a hidden file to be created in a temporary directory, which is immediately deleted when you power off the VM

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in VMWare, Workstation | No Comments »

VMWare Workstation 6.5 beta

Monday, May 19th, 2008

If you are curios and interested like I am than the latest VMWare Workstation 6.5 beta is definitely something to download and install on your system.

Why Participate in a VMware Beta Program?

Here are a few reasons why you should participate in VMware beta programs.

  • Exposure to the next generation features helps you grow your technical skills and understand the direction of the virtualization industry.
  • Ability to prove that the product will work properly in your environment and report areas where it doesn’t.
  • Prototype your solution during the beta program and be ready for deployment when we reach General Availability.
  • Help shape today’s product and tomorrow’s features.
  • Ability to work with VMware engineers on some programs.
  • Problems encountered have a higher probability of being fixed by GA.

Join the new beta program for Workstation 6.5 here.

image

New Features in VMware Workstation 6.5:

  • Seamless integration of guest and host applications with Unity
  • Enhanced advanced VM Record and Replay
  • Support for Smart Cards & Smart Card Readers
  • Link state propagation networking
  • Enhanced ACE authoring capabilities
  • Easy Install Option’s support for Linux
  • Improved 3D graphics Support
  • Release 91182 supports ESX 3.5 and 3i installations

For me personally I would like to explore Unity and ESX in virtual machine support features. I like to keep my system as clean as possible and right now I can have one virtual machines hosting all my applications which I use occasionally. I don’t want to install Adobe Photoshop, Paintshop,  Visual Studio and many others on my host system; with Unity I can bring all those application to my host system. Definitely  something I will use quite often.

Since the release of ESX 3.5 and 3i I have been waiting to have a working installation of those products into VMWare Workstation. Thanks to Eric from NTPRo.nl who is confirming that ESX is up and running in the latest release of VMWare Workstation 6.5 beta.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Workstation | No Comments »