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Virtual XP in Windows 7 RC. Virtually useless.
The Windows 7 RC is humming along quite nicely, and I promise that this will be the last Microsoft post for a while. The additional download of a Virtual XP environment intrigued me enough to download and install it. I can’t quite understand what the purpose of a Virtual PC running XP in Windows 7 can be, but here goes.
First off, it is a requirement that the target machine has a modern Intel processor capable of Virtualization Technology. Most Intel Core Duo‘s or better have this feature, but to be sure I downloaded Intel‘s CPU identification utility. The utility provides a basic overview of the CPU‘s capabilities
and the all-important Yes for the required virtualization support.
With the basic hardware requirement met, I downloaded the first of two files from Microsoft‘s site. Initially, a support package needs to be installed. The installation is quick, but requires a reboot. After the reboot, the system is ready to accept the installation program to complete the setup of Virtual Windows XP.
A few clicks is all it takes. The setup routine basically installs a virtual machine environment, then populates a pre-built disk image containing a functional Windows XP system.
There is no option to enter a user name for the OS, only a password. The name of the user is…User. That should be difficult to forget. Multiple logons are not possible with the free copy of XP Microsoft provides in the virtual PC environment.
Since we are talking about a vulnerable OS inside another vulnerable OS, it may be prudent to permit this XP to check for updates…
Once the setup has completed, you are left with a guest Windows XP system inside a virtual machine running on top of Windows 7. A nice feature is that the host OS drives are available automatically, permitting easy sharing of files from one environment to another. How this affects the overall security of the system as a whole is a totally different question: Windows 7 requires some form of virus protection, as does XP. That means installing anti-virus measures in the guest OS to ensure that no nasties bite the host. Anti-virus is not exactly a performance improver, and we are talking a basic virtual machine here. Extra functions to handle USB devices, power the VM off and send a Ctrl-Alt-Del to the guest OS are accessible from the Virtual PC menu bar.
I can’t see any corporate wanting to upgrade existing systems to Windows 7 only to run legacy applications inside a virtual machine environment. The headaches that would cause, not to mention the wasted administrative effort is simply not worth contemplating. Then, there’s the issue of the guest and host being very interoperable which makes most security types a bit nervous and requires two anti-virus licenses, at the very least. The virtual machine environment is dedicated to the single instance of XP, so it’s unusable for, say, Ubuntu or anything else, for that matter. It’s a lot of software for a simple XP setup that already runs well enough on a low-end desktop.
In my opinion, the provision of an XP emulation mode is not a bad thing, but the implementation by way of a complete, separate VM makes no sense: wouldn’t it have been possible to simply provide an XP wrapper in the main OS to run programs that require such support? Overall, I’m a bit confused as to what the Virtual XP thing is all about. Take one free copy of Virtualbox, add as many operating systems as you wish on top of your host OS and you have a much better, more flexible solution. With Virtualbox, the guest OS can be backed up, snapshots created and moved around as an image. That’s not possible with the Microsoft Virtual XP environment.
No more reset of Firefox proxy settings
The installation of the Windows 7 RC and subsequent installation of necessary applications (all of the latest possible version) has eradicated an annoying issue my Firefox browser exhibited: when opening a new window from a link on a landing page, that page would be unable to display any content when a proxy setting had been entered. In fact, clicking on such a link would reset the proxy to “No proxy“, necessitating a visit to the network connections windows to change the the proxy settings in Firefox back to the intended setting.
I’m pleased to announce that the issue has been fixed. I’m assuming that it’s something that was wonky in the Windows 7 Beta, as the Firefox 3.0.10 version had already installed itself while I was running the Beta. A closer look at the error seemed to indicate a reference to the built-in Java virtual machine, but I can’t confirm that as the source of the problem.
Nice to be able to navigate the Interwebs once again as they was intended 
Windows 7 RC 64-bit live on G2S
Yesterday’s quick test installation of the new Windows 7 RC OS took place on a 32-bit platform. Today, I bit the bullet, made sure I had a double backup of all documents, downloads and other assorted stuffs and then placed the 64-bit Windows 7 RC DVD into the drive of G2S. Once again, the installation completed without incident, taking less than 30 minutes to get the basic OS up and running.
64-bit. No touch device installed, this is true. That could be interesting…
As with the Beta installation, there are some non-essential devices that require a third-party driver. I haven’t pulled these in yet – in the Beta version, the Vista drivers I had available wouldn’t work.
No matter. The generic NVIDIA driver seems to be working well enough, though I’ll probably load the latest one I have at some time.
Within a period of two hours I had all most-needed applications reinstalled and had all documents restored. Anti-virus too. Don’t forget that… If you got your copy of the Windows 7 RC ISO off a torrent, you may be the victim of a Trojan…
Performance is snappy and so far, no issue as with the Beta. It’s still no replacement for OS X, but it’s streets ahead of Vista…
Windows 7 RC test install
After today’s quick download of both the 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 RC ISO‘s, I decided to check out the 32-bit release by installing it for a quick look. As with the Windows 7 Beta, the installation of the OS is streamlined and reasonably quick. There are very few questions or prompts to respond to and the overall installation takes place without much intervention.
An upgrade option is available, though this purportedly won’t upgrade an existing Windows 7 Beta installation.
I’ll try that out one when I install on G2S, so I can’t comment on that for now. I did a clean installation and, as mentioned above, that does most everything without further intervention. After a single restart, the OS proceeds to set itself up to be ready to run.
There is little new to see once the system starts up and is ready for use. With the exception of a collection of new themes and backgrounds, this is the Windows 7 well-known from the Beta release. It’s still fast and responsive and detects most basic hardware without too much effort. I didn’t fiddle with additional drivers at this point in time – in the Beta, I had some issues with the NVIDIA driver. Here, the generic driver works well enough.
The only other piece of eye-candy I noticed is the animation or glow on the icons in the taskbar. Some very detailed icons (especially for removable devices) make the Explorer windows attractive. The same functionality with the quick list to access open windows remains and the Finder-style search field makes finding programs and files very easy. I expect the changes in Build 7100 are more than skin deep.
That’s basically all there is to see. If this release is anything as stable as the Beta was, Microsoft is making good on the promise to provide something a lot better than Vista. There is some additional media support provided out-of-the-box for the Media Player (specifically Quicktime support) which will reduce the number of additional codecs needing to be installed.
Two notable changes to core Windows applications are identifiable once Write
and Paint
are launched. They include the new Office-style ribbon bar and enhanced user interfaces.
The RC does not change anything the Beta showed, which makes the Beta release even more impressive, in my opinion. Provided the RC shows the same stability as I’ve experienced with the Beta I’ll be very happy to go to the effort of re-installing.
Windows 7 RC available
After a few days of exclusivity during which the new Windows 7 RC ISO was available for download only to developers and Technet subscribers, Microsoft has made the software available to the general public. There’s no rush, as both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions will be available for download for quite some time from the official site. I’m rather keen to get the RC as I intend installing Windows 7 on katana II to co-exist with the new Ubuntu 9.0.2 release, so I was eagerly waiting for the download link to appear this morning. The ISO‘s are large, weighing in at roughly 3.5GB for both the 32-bit and the 64-bit version.
I’m not too keen on the Java download manager Microsoft insists on installing to handle the download
I parse the URL out of the download link and give it to DownThemAll to sort out. The direct download link for the 32-bit version is here and for the 64-bit version here.
There is no official way of upgrading an existing Beta installation with the RC, though a workaround is available. The recommended installation method is a fresh installation which involves the backup of all important data. I need to find some time to get the RC installed on G2S and on katana II. Feedback once I’ve done that…
Firefox proxy settings. Reset.
Windows 7 is still functioning flawlessly and I’m happy to repeat that this is one of the best OS releases Microsoft has ever mustered.
With the exception of CutePDF, I’ve had little hassle getting most of my favourite applications to work. As with CutePDF, a viable and free alternative is often at hand. For CutePDF, substitute BullZip PDF Printer, an excellent replacement.
A rather odd experience with the Firefox proxy settings has been occurring, however. I’m usually behind a very stringent proxy with all sorts of nonsensical filtering and URL checking going on. So normally, Firefox runs with a manual proxy setting by default.
But every now and then, it is necessary to escape the shackles of WebNonSense. So I jack in the E220 modem and get onto the MTN HSDPA network. For that sesssion, I turn the proxy setting off.
Everything works fine until I need to open another window from a URL or link.
2 * 7 days with Windows 7 beta
Once G2S came back from its repairs, I decided to trash the Vista Ultimate installation and switch over to Windows 7 as a primary OS. That was roughly two weeks ago. As with my tests of the beta in Virtualbox and on the older nx8220, I’ve been extremely impressed. I chose to go the whole hog and installed the 64-bit operating system, wondering how much trouble I’d experience when having to add drivers.
Thankfully, all the important stuff works. The ASUS notebook does include a variety of non-standard devices, but the Windows 7 installation didn’t seem to fuss about those too much, getting the installation done in record time. If there’s anything to be pleased about, it’s the comparison of how labouriously things got going under Vista and how quickly similar tasks run on Windows 7. It’s snappy and whereas I’d wait forever for the system to be usable from boot in Vista, Windows 7 has the necessary stuff at the ready in a fraction of the time. Shutdowns, too, are much faster.
The user experience is very similar to Vista, with some changes that are easy to get used to. First off, I always change the look and function of the Start menu to classic view. In 7, this is no longer an option. What I don’t like about the non-classic Start menu is the arrangement of items – I’m pedantic and like program items in specific categories, so I always created my own menu items and grouped the relevant applications according to my preference. But since my Mac came along, I’ve become very accustomed to the Finder and a minimal set of icons on a launch tray.
The endresult is a huge benefit and time saving: I simply use the search bar in the Start menu to quickly find what I want. The most-often used programs are retained in the primary Start menu and easy to launch with a single click. No more having to worry about how messy the menu structure further down becomes…
Test install – Windows 7 Beta
Microsoft struggled to deal with the demand for their Windows 7 Beta release. So much so that the download was not available on the promised date. The availability of the beta software has been extended for two weeks and seems no longer to be restricted to the first 2.5 million applications. The shift of the download date meant I could take advantage of a no-payment download option. This is particularly useful for large files…
Getting the rather large (2.24GB) ISO for the 32-bit version down the first time was unsuccessful for some or other reason. I attempted to get the software installed in a VM and subsequently test-booted on nx8220 only to be greeted by the following error
Somehow, the ISO image had been corrupted, possibly by one or more restarts of the download. For good measure, I started the download of both 32-bit and 64-bit ISO‘s once again. Mercifully, both completed in a reasonable two hour period. This time the 32-bit image seemed to be error free, confirmed by the fact that VMWare recognized the ISO image as a Windows Vista installation medium.
The fact that the download has been extended to any number of interested hackers was confirmed by the new issue of a serial key each time I attempted the download. I have a few spare, just in case
The installation in the VM was absolutely painless. VMWare suggests using the quick installer, which presents the opportunity of entering user name, password and serial key into a dialog box for the Windows installer to utilize. There was no other information required by the installation program as it proceeded to copy and uncompress files, then install and reboot a few times.
It all looks very much like Vista, from the look and feel of the dialog boxes to the logon screen that is presented once Windows 7 has rebuilt the registry and checked the performance of the graphics card it will be relying on.
The desktop is attractive and clutter-free and the Start menu is still where one expects to find it. On the whole, no major changes at all. The well-known Vista gadgets may be dragged to the desktop and Internet Explorer 8 is a standard part of the installation.
Though I ran the installation and initial test in a VM on G2S performance seemed brisk and rather snappy. This is one of the promises the Microsoft development team has made: no huge resource requirements and the ability to run on hardware that has not been upgraded to the max. I’ll be trying the installation on a two-year old notebook sometime this week to see how well that hardware copes with Windows 7 – Vista was a no-go for that platform.
Here’s another screenshot showing the new calculator and Explorer window.
A clever change is the show desktop button – it has moved all the way to the far right of the task bar, next to the time and date display. Network connectivity is automatically detected at startup and the network wizard requests how the network is to be set up. This also enables media to be shared automatically on a home network, for example. Once I have the OS installed on a dedicated system, I’ll try out Microsoft Office and a few other applications to give a better appraisal of its functionality, reliability and performance. For now, I like what I see, especially the apparent performance improvements.
Windows 7 on the way
I’m rather sick and tired of Vista. On a laptop that was built for Vista, the overall non-performance of this operating system is absolutely shocking. I speak in particular of my experience with Vista‘s inability to copy or move files, even though I loaded the SP1 and re-installed the machine some time ago.
Microsoft seems to be aware of the problems they have foisted on the world’s computer users: Windows 7, the successor to Vista, is already in a late beta release and is looking to be unleashed some time next year. Probably after the second quarter of the year.
Windows 7 is built on the Vista core, but early indications are that the new operating system is slimmed down, performs well and seems to present a much better user experience. I hope they manage to get it right. XP was a great OS and provided all the necessary backward compatibility one could wish for while still modernizing a number of things. It is high time that Microsoft bites the bullet and re-engineers their OS from the ground up, without caring about what came before. The huge penetration their software has in the corporate world makes such a move unlikely, but in the end it is the only way to actually move forward.
Here’s hoping that Windows 7 will deliver…
Remote code execution vulnerability
Microsoft has issued a critical security vulnerability bulletin that includes a patch for the Windows family of products to prevent remote code execution.
The vulnerability has been reported to exist in the Server service and could allow remote code execution if an affected system received a specially crafted RPC request. It is also possible that the vulnerability could allow arbitrary code to run without authentication.
This is basically a loophole a worm could exploit to run malicious code and spread to other systems. As always, keep your anti-virus software up to date, be sure to stay behind a firewall and watch where you’re travelling to on the Interweb! Or run Linux. Of course, a worm can get through on a LAN, too.
Microsoft recommends that the patch be applied immediately. A list to specific patches for various Windows releases is provided here.
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