All Things IT Blog

Yes…. kinda

It’s a bit tricky getting a Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machine working in the new Windows 2008 Virtualization Environment, Hyper-V. You’re going to run into several issues:

1. Because of a significant hardware change visible to the VM, you might need to reactivate your Microsoft OS.
2. You will need to uninstall the Microsoft Virtual Machine accessibility drivers/software.
3. You will need to install the Hyper-V accessibility drivers/software.

The biggest issue I ran into was step #2. One of my virtual machines that was running Windows 2003 Server R2 and when I went to uninstall the ‘old’ Virtual PC accessibility drivers/software, I was told by the uninstaller that I was only able to uninstall the software while running in a Virtual Environment, which it was under Hyper-V. I did not have this problem with another Windows 2003 Server VM, so it might have been an isolated incident. Be that as it may, I had to boot up the VHD in Virtual PC and uninstall the software.

Also, the Hyper-V drivers/software will not install OVER the Virtual PC software, which is why you must uninstall it first. Once you install the Hyper-V software, it will install a new HAL, reboot, then install the new drivers for the network, video and sound devices.

The performance gains from Hyper-V are noticable and worth the upgrade! I believe Hyper-V being built into Windows 2008 Server will be a huge success over third party solutions such as VMWare. One thing to keep in mind is that Hyper-V is only available in the 64-bit version of Windows 2008 Server! Also, running Windows 2008 Server on a machine that has a CPU that supports Intel’s IVT or AMD’s AMD-V allow the Hypervisor to run the Virtual Machines at nearly full speed.

I’ve found that the setting for Intel VT-i on Dell machine’s is turned off by default and has to be enabled in the BIOS. Unfortunately, Dell has the Virtualization option in different locations in the BIOS menu depending on the system. On my Dimension 9200 it’s under ‘Security’, on my Precision 4300 Laptop it’s under ‘POST Options’ and on my Precision 390 it’s under ‘Performance’.

One thing I am noticing is that Hyper-V is still obviously BETA and there are some issues, with VM’s ‘locking up’ or the network adapter in a Hyper-V VM showing ‘Network Cable is Unplugged’, when the other VM’s are not having any issues. So user beware!

I hope this was able to help some people out!

Cheers!