Issues using Virtual PC 2007...

[Joe 90]

I got bored last night and pulled down a copy of server 2k3 from MSDN and installed it on a vpc. Trouble is i've never really used a vpc before so first of all don't really understand too much about what you can do with it... other than the obvious fact that its essentially a different system. Then theres the fact that I don't know any shortcuts, specifically how to switch back to my main OS once i've started to use the vpc. I've been having to Alt+Ctrl+Del it to pull up task manager!

Any tips on how to use it and what to do with it ?

[Mark]

Well, you got the first two keys right anyway - Ctrl+Alt usually does it (well, does in VPC 2004 and VMWare). :)

[Joe 90]

cool cheers :)

[Toby]

Two things to check straight away:

First, have you installed the Virtual Machine Additions? It's on one of the menus and mounts a CD image which autoplays to install the extras. The main benefit is it allows you to seamlessly move your mouse from the host OS to the VPC window without Ctrl-Alt-Del to get out of the window (Right-Alt works too btw).

Secondly, if your processor supports it, enable the hardware assisted option under settings. This speeds things up no end, to the point where the VPC is only a few percent slower than running natively.

I find VPC very useful for testing stuff out and playing around. It just emulates a standard PC so the guest OS doesn't know any different. You can install pretty much anything in there, including Linux and there are numerous options to play with. Amonst the most useful is being able to simply suspend the state of the virtual machine and shut it down, sort of like a hibernate, and it'll restore to exactly the same point you left it. Another useful feature is undo disks, where all disk writes are cached in a separate file and, when you close down, you can either merge the changes back into the main disk image so they're there next time or you can bin them and start again as if you'd not done a thing - this is superb for testing things out and doing software installs and so forth - it's like system restore on steroids :)

Have fun

[Joe 90]

ah yeah - forgot about the second disk.

it wont let me use the product key that MS gave me though (and i've tried one that I got from work)
any ideas why? i used the key from MS without any trouble for the first disk.