Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way - Rick Strahl's Web Log

Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way

May 25, 2006 @ 1:04 pm

Ok, I give up with Vista on VPC. It's just not a workable solution…

I installed Beta 2 on VPC hoping that it would solve the issues I've been having previously and run with a reasonable level of performance on this fairly fast dual core machine I'm running here. But no such luck.

Beta 2 did install properly though – it installed without any problems albeit painfully slow (install took 4 hours!) and the Vista VPC extensions installed without any problems.

But the installation is so freaking slow it's unsable. Opening any sort of explorer window takes 30+ seconds.

Setup:

2ghz Intel Dual Core machine

VPC disk on an external 7200 RPM USB drive

VPC configured with 1 gig of RAM

My main goal for installing Vista has been to take a closer look at IIS7 and check for compatibility with some of our tools as well as some feature enhancements that are going to be made possible by the integrated pipeline.

But I never got that far <g>. Installing IIS too took about an hour. Another fun excercise I did: I copied an 11 meg zip file to the machine and try to unzip it. After 30 minutes of running and only being 1/3 done I decided that this is simply not going to work <g>…

So, my question is this? Anybody running Vista on VPC and seeing reasonable performance? I have XP and Win2003 running in VPC's and both are very fast – in fact you barely notice they're running on VPC (honestly!). Vista is a complete slug in comparison.

And if not, WTF is it about Vista that makes it run so spectacularily bad on VPC? I had installed Vista on an older machine a while back and while it was no speed demon, it was running reasonably well on a standalone machine. So it must have some sort of interaction with VPC that's causing it running so damn slow.

Anyway, I ordered a new Hard disk for my laptop and I'm going to try install Vista on that. We'll see how well it does on a full blown fast and appropriately configured machine.

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re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by Jeff Atwood May 25, 2006 @ 2:53 pm

> Ok, I give up with Vista on VPC. It's just not a workable solution…

Geez, I realized that after PDC 05. What took you so long? ;)

> And if not, WTF is it about Vista that makes it run so spectacularily bad on VPC?

Vista really requires DirectX video hardware acceleration. The emulated video is, er, a problem. It's the same reason you don't boot up Warcraft III under VPC.

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by John Watson May 25, 2006 @ 3:00 pm

Rick,

This guy Mike says to wait a bit until newer VM additions come out...

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikekol/archive/2006/05/23/603900.aspx

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by Rick Strahl May 25, 2006 @ 3:48 pm

Jeff, uhm, I think that's only if you're running the advanced video modes. VPC doesn't do that - it runs in some sort of VGA style compatibility mode and that works OK on a slow machine.

There's something funky with the way Vista interacts with VPC. Maybe it's the video, maybe not.

I'd do this on another machine if I had one handy. Unfortunately I'm stuck with my one notebook while I'm on the mainland and I sure am not going to buy a new box just for Vista <g>... The hard drive is something I need anyway and a good thing to have around for various backup purposes.

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by Steve from Pleasant Hill May 25, 2006 @ 5:42 pm

Can you use VMWare instead? It's free.

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by Gabriel Lozano-Morán May 25, 2006 @ 6:04 pm

VMware is free? Anyway I am running Beta 2 in a VMware virtual pc and when working in full screen it's like I am not even running it as a virtual pc. Haven't tried it in Virtual PC though so I can't really compare the two.

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by Steve from Pleasant Hill May 25, 2006 @ 7:39 pm

Maybe it's just VMServer that's free: here's a good link:

http://www.larkware.com/editorials/vmware.html

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by Lee May 25, 2006 @ 9:15 pm

VMWare Player is free. While you can't directly create virtual machines with it, there are a number of websites that have utilities to create them. That said, Vista Beta 2 did not intall.

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by wOOdy May 27, 2006 @ 5:29 am

Hi Rick, have you tried to run that VPC from a local file? I have seen dramatic slowdowns with external USB-harddisks, thus maybe that's also with your setup....

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by Rick Strahl May 27, 2006 @ 1:09 pm

No haven't tried that but XP and Win2003 run on that same drive and are fast. I recently moved the files onto the local hard disk and by comparison that exprience is dreadfully slow <g>.

As a previous poster said, I think it's probably something in the VPC extensions that's required to get the perf decent.

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by steve May 28, 2006 @ 6:56 pm

the last public ctp ran fine on my machine with vpc and the vhd on an external usb after I installed the virtual server r2 machine additions. the beta 2 took 14 hours to install and runs like crap even after I installed the same machine additions. I'm finally giving up on virtual pc and moving all of my apps to vmware. why not? the virtual server beta is free and when it's out of beta it will still be free.

Windows Vista (beta 2) - VPC
by rbfigueira May 31, 2006 @ 4:51 am

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by ITGuyfromHELL June 09, 2006 @ 9:56 am

I just installed Vista Beta 2 on a VMWare ESX server, 3GHz Xeon, 1GB RAM, 4MB video. I installed the VM tools, and it is running very fast. My only issue is VNC, but I can get around it by running the VMWare VirtualCenter.

ITGuyfromHELL
james@jamescomputers.com

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by John Walker June 12, 2006 @ 1:24 am

Rick,

To confirm your findings, I am running Vista Beta 2 under VPC on a dual core Dell XPS system here and it is totally unusable. 40 seconds to load IE7's MSN home page.

As a previous commenter noted, I am hoping for a new version of the VM additions....

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikekol/archive/2006/05/23/603900.aspx

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by Chris June 12, 2006 @ 9:43 am

Runs fine under Virtual Server 2005 R2....which is free.

I also read somewhere that you can use the VMadditions (downloadable from MS) from Virtual Server 2005 on VPC.

I Vista Beta 2 working fine on my XP box under Virtual Server 2005 R2. The VM additions install but you only get Aero Basic.

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by Norman Diamond June 12, 2006 @ 6:52 pm

VMware Server is free. Presently in beta but VMware has promised that the released product will be free too. A few months after that, Microsoft made Virtual Server R2 free.

I tried installing two versions of Vista under VMware Server and performance was even worse than Vista beta 2 under Virtual PC. Obviously there's more than one reason, older CTPs vs. the most recent beta, under a beta virtualization vs. a released virtualization. Anyway with one version that I tried under VMware, I waited 10 minutes and Windows Explorer wouldn't open, I told it to shut down and waited 10 minutes but it didn't start the shutdown, and I just deleted the guest. You say it took you 30 seconds to open Windows Explorer, wow you've got it made.

When VM Additions or Extensions or whatever are installed into the guest, they install a root kit that optimizes interactions between the guest's OS and the VMware or Virtual Server or Virtual PC application on the real machine. This does speed things up. I think that when these products are finally released, they'll run fast enough. They'll lose keyboard input and corrupt shared files just as quickly as existing products do under VPC.

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by Jeff Barnes June 13, 2006 @ 10:44 am

I was also experiencing miserably poor performance with Beta 2 using the current VM additions. So, I downloaded VMWare Server (http://www.vmware.com/products/server/) to give it a try.

I haven't experienced any problems so far. Actually, it blew Virtual Server out of the water in terms of performance, even before I installed VMWare Tools (their version of VM additions). I have been a pretty big fan of MS Virtual Server, but my brief exposure to VMWare Server has me waffling a bit...especially given my frustration over the problem with the current VM additions in regards to Beta 2.

You might consider trying it as an alternative, at least on a temporary basis until the new VM additions are released. It might be worth giving it a shot.

re: Vista Beta 2 on VPC - no way
by Gmango July 28, 2006 @ 7:48 pm

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/899525/en-us

fixes it

Virtually Vista : Using Windows Vista / Longhorn Server Beta 2 on Virtual PC or Virtual Server
by Virtually Vista July 07, 2007 @ 10:10 am

I've got to say, I've been using Vista and Longhorn Server internally for a very long time now - pretty much since Beta 1 was released - and I'm very impressed at how far we've come with the product. There are still some rough edges, but there's time