I feel so dirty for having chosen that as a title for this post.  I mean, seriously.  Out of all the blog posts that have ever been made about one changing the name of their blog, how many of them paraphrased The Bard in the title?  I’m guessing "lots."  Anyway, onto the actual content.

I started this blog back in 2005 with the intention of helping our valuable customers (that’s you guys) use Virtual PC and Virtual Server run some brand-spankin’ new operating system called Vista.  Over the course of the CTP and beta releases, I made a few posts about how to get the VM Additions running under various builds of Vista and Longhorn Server. 

The problem with that, though, was that eventually there wasn’t anything new to write about.  We released Windows Vista, and new versions of Virtual PC and Virtual Server - and everything became static.  There was no new news.

Then along came Jones Hyper-V.  I’m going to be blogging about Hyper-V from now on, which means that this blog is going to need a new name.

From now on, this blog shall be known as "Virtual Varia", since I think it better describes the sort of content I’ll be providing here.

The URL won’t change, and all of my old posts will remain just where they are. 

Thanks for reading, everyone!

For the most part Virtual PC is able to happily run when you are using a non-administrative user account and everything will work. There are - however - a couple of things that will not work correctly unless Virtual PC is run under an Administrative account:

1. Using ping (or other ICMP based tools) over shared networking.
   
   In order to create ICMP packets (as opposed to standard TCP/IP packets) that appear to originate from the virtual machine when using shared networking - we need to access Windows APIs that are restricted to only being accessed by administrators.
   
   The reason why these APIs are restricted is that there are a number of known ICMP based network attacks that malicious software could try to utilized on your computer.
   
   The impact of this is that you will simply be unable to ping other computers from a virtual machine. Note that this does not affect virtual machines that are using a direct connection to the physical network adapter.
   
   
2. Using or converting linked virtual hard disks.
   
   Linked virtual hard disks require us to open a handle to the raw physical disk object (and bypass the Windows file system). As this mechanism could also be used to bypass file system security it is restricted to administrative processes only.
   
   If Virtual PC is not running as an administrative process you will be unable to create linked virtual hard disks, convert linked virtual hard disks or boot virtual machines with linked virtual hard disks connected to them.
   
   
3. Accessing copy protected CDs.
   
   Virtual PC attempts to access the physical CD by using a handle to the raw disk (like with linked virtual hard disks) but if that fails it will fall back to using the Windows file APIs to access the CD.
   
   The Windows file APIs work fine for accessing normal data off of CDs - but is unable to provide the information necessary to support the use of copy protected CDs inside of virtual machines.
   
   If Virtual PC is not running as an administrative process access to normal CDs will function correctly - as will data access to copy protected CDs - however any software that attempts to check the authenticity of a copy protected CD will fail.
   
   
4. Configuring the Virtual PC security options.
   
   Configuring the Virtual PC security options requires that we change registry keys stored in the Local Machine registry hive. The values are stored here so that non-administrative users cannot undo security settings changes made by an administrative user.
   
   If Virtual PC is not running as an administrative process the settings on this options page will be disabled.

Now remember that under Windows Vista Virtual PC will be running as a non-administrative process even if you are using an administrative account. To get these features to work under Vista you need to right click on the Virtual PC icon in the start menu and select 'Run as administrator' (with the exception of the Virtual PC security options where we will prompt you to give administrative approval if you are not running as administrator).

To continue my "here’s why" series of posts, I figured I’d talk about something else that a lot of our users have run into - the infamous disappearing mouse when you try to use a Hyper-V guest while TS’d (that’s Terminal Services - or Remote Desktop) into the host machine.

Here’s the scenario:  You’ve got a VM that you need to use, so you TS into your host machine, start up the Hyper-V Management Tool, connect to your VM and try to use it.  Suddenly, your mouse doesn’t work anymore, so you try to release it using the CTRL-ALT-Left Arrow hotkey.  That doesn’t work.  Now you can’t even use the mouse on your host operating system.

If you close your TS session and restart it, you get your mouse back, but this happens each time you try to control your guest.

Some of you are probably saying "Yes - that happens to me all the time, and it’s annoying!"  Others may think I’m making it up, since they’ve never had this problem.

So, here’s what’s going on.   There are two modes of mouse operation when we’re dealing with Virtual Machines:  integrated and relative, as discussed by Ben Armstrong here. 

When you TS into the host machine, your mouse is running in integrated mode.  When you’re using a VMConnect window to control a VM, the mouse runs in relative mode (with one important caveat, which I will come to later on).  When you mix integrated and relative mode, you get badness.

So what is a humble system administrator or virtualization enthusiast to do?

There are a few work-arounds:

• Run Windows Server 2008 as a guest.  No, seriously.  The Hyper-V Integration Components are built into Windows Server 2008, so it will simply work in this configuration out of the box.
• Install the Integration Components for your guest operating system.  This is the caveat I was talking about earlier, and is the primary reason why some of you have quite possibly never seen this.   If you have the ICs installed and running, the mouse is running in integrated mode, and works flawlessly over TS.
• TS directly into the guest operating system.  If there are no ICs available for your chosen guest OS, you can use TS (or any other remote control application, really) to control the guest directly.  This assumes, of course, that the VM is exposed to the same network as the machine you’re controlling it from.
• Use the actual, physical console of the host machine.  If you take TS out of the picture, you won’t have this problem.
• Remote Administration tools for Hyper-V.  These aren’t available yet, but in our final release, we’ll provide a way for you to install the Hyper-V Manager tools on Windows Vista, so you won’t actually have to run them on a server. 

So, you are in the mood for studying Group Policy? In the lack of GGPI, I know the feeling.

And you got tired of reading my GP stuff here:
http://www.windowsecurity.com/Jakob_H_Heidelberg :-)

I’ll recommend you to go for these sites then:
http://blogs.technet.com/grouppolicy
http://www.gpanswers.com
http://www.gpoguy.com

That’s where everything starts…

Enjoy!

.

With the advent of Windows Vista, the issue of downgrading to Windows XP came into the limelight and got a consistent amount of play throughout 2007. Initially, Microsoft had a complex downgrading process in place that forced Windows users to go from Vista to XP through unnecessary activation pains. As a direct consequence of user feedback, the company simplified the downgrading process, in order to streamline the implementation of an older Windows iteration in place of Vista.

Here was the old process of downgrading from Vista to XP, courtesy of Microsoft: “when an end user is using their downgrade rights offered under the License Terms in Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate editions, and they use both Windows XP media and product keys that were previously activated, they cannot activate online over the Internet, due to the hardware configuration change when installing on the Windows Vista system. (more…)

I’ve received quite some queries about Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007. One of the queries is:

Can I use only 1 server to deploy Office Communications Server?

The simple answer is:

If you do not need external users to connect into the OCS service, then it is OK. The minimum setup is:
1 Domain Controller
1 Member server installed with OCS

The above will only give you simple MSN-like service within your corporate.

However, if you need to have external users to be able to connect back to the OCS, you will need to setup another server called an Edge Server (install the Edge Server roles).

For Audio/Video, you might need ANOTHER server for it, since it will be pretty processor/memory intensive.

So… Is OCS a feasible solution for small businesses? I would say - It depends. If their TOC outweights the benefits, then No. But if they do a lot of trainings and employees are scattered across the place and needs frequently web conference, then yes.

What do you think? Have you tried out OCS2007? Is that what you were expecting?

P.s: OCS2007 was formerly known as Live Communication Server 2003/2005. I’m also doing screencasts on OCS which can be found at www.internet.com/video (http://www.internet.com/video/3601)

More information of OCS can be found: http://office.microsoft.com/communicationsserver. If you need more information or guidance on OCS, you can contact me through this blog or send me an email over at mingteikg [ at    ] blizhosting-Dot-com.