Wanted to share a new VMware blog by Elliott Stewart for the personal desktop product documentation. The new blog addresses documentation questions, provides troubleshooting tips, and provides fresh information on Workstation, Fusion, Player, and ACE.

http://blogs.vmware.com/vanswers/

You can RSS-subscribe to the blog or follow Elliot on Twitter at @elliottvmw.

Welcome Elliot!

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Finding vAnswers blog

My first thought was that this probably would introduce some performance issues, but then it hit me that this would cause the incorrect VMware Tools to get installed in the VM, leading to all sorts of unintended behaviors. Even worse, if the correct MCA/MCE architecture is not presented to the guest during boot I don’t think it will start at all. We use guest OS type to get this info (it only matters during boot as far as I know).

How to fix it:

1. Power off the VM.
2. Modify via GUI option General of the properties of your VM.
3. Power on the VM.
4. Reinstall the correct VMware Tools.

Anybody know of any more gotchas associated with having the wrong OS type specified for your VM?

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Impact of wrong OS type for VMs

I see today that VMware is offering a free online course to learn the ins and outs of VMware Workstation 7. Quoting their website:

With the tremendous number of new Workstation 7 customers, I am very excited to announce the availability of a free introductory, self-paced online course.  The course is designed for people who are new VMware Workstation and it will quickly walk you through the steps for installing VMware Workstation, creating virtual machines, installing tools, configuring networks, and much more.  To access the course, you will be prompted to create a VMware myLearn account if you do not already have one.

Click this link to get started!

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Free VMware Workstation Course

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All about Time in VMware

Here’s what James Michels, head of technology at Bluefin Trading, a private trading firm specializing in equities, debt, option and derivatives trading had to say about Workstation 6-

“I am a developer who works primarily with Windows Vista x64, so VMware Workstation’s 64-bit support is very useful to me. Before I release my code, I regularly use VMware Workstation to try the application out on 32-bit Windows Vista as well as 32-bit Windows XP. Additionally, I have fresh installs to test out applications against. And, I can do all of this on a single desktop. Once you use VMware Workstation, you can’t imagine life without it.”

[phpbay]vmware workstation, 5[/phpbay]

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VMware Workstation 6 Download

VMware Workstation 6 now includes the ability to capture complete execution behavior. As you all know, the complete execution path of the software can be very different from one execution of software to the next. Add multi-threaded programs into the mix and you have a situation where no two executions of software are ever exactly the same. Here’s a short description taken from The Amazing VM Record/Replay Feature in VMware Workstation 6-

“When you enable the Record/Replay feature, VMware Workstation immediately takes a snapshot of the full VM state, continues guest software execution, and begins tracking its execution behavior. We’re not talking about a movie of what’s on the screen, but the full system behavior including all CPU and device activity. It notes the exact point in time when every device interrupt or other asynchronous event occurs and records this information to a compressed log file until you tell it to stop. It actually has to save a few other things such as the contents of all incoming networking packets, too.”

This is break-through stuff for technical support people and software developers. Bravo!

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VMware Record and Play

VMware.

I quote-

“So, why recommend VMWare’s software over Microsoft’s own Virtual PC? That answer is exceedingly simple: VMWare is an amazingly robust virtualization tool – and it’s the only one that supports USB 2.0 device passthroughs. Virtual USB device support *ALONE* is makes it possible to run your XP-happy hardware on Windows Vista. Virtual PC is an inferior product by comparison – no arguments, my friends.”

That’s an awesome endorsement from a guy who is more Microsoft friendly than most other outspoken tech bloggers/podcasters.

I too have just had it with Vista and tossed it out. I bought a brand new laptop last weekend from my local big box electronic chain which had Vista preloaded on it. Sure looked nice and shiny in the store. Got it home and much to my dismay a lot of my software had issues with Vista, not to mention I couldn’t run my copy of VMware Workstation on it. Arrrgh!!

Now, me is smart, so I thought I’d be able to load up my old XP cd into it and load my trusty old XP operating system; as Chris said, it just works. Well, the XP boot cd could not sense any hard drives in this laptop. Probably a SATA drive thing, but I didn’t want any battles. Back to the store went this laptop, and back home I came with a discontinued model with XP on it. Thank-goodness. Just got it by the skin of my teeth as they were selling out fast.

People are going to be really unhappy with Vista I think. The short time I played with it I found it a real pain in the butt to use. I’m going to be much happier running XP and of course my VMware guest operating sytems!

And I can’t wait for VMware Workstation 6!

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There’s Help for Windows Vista