This was something that really annoyed me when trying to configure VMWare Player 3, there seemed to be no easy way of changing the IP address range or the DHCP addresses when using Windows as the host OS.
Actually there is but in a stroke of genius by VMWare it isn’t installed properly. The program that you require is called vmnetcfg.exe and is included in the installer but isn’t installed. Its really difficult to find anything about it on VMWare’s site so to get to it:
1. Run the installer with /e option. For example:
VMware-player-3.0.0-197124.exe /e vm
All contents will be extracted to “vm” folder.
2. Open “network.cab” and copy vmnetcfg.exe to your installation folder,
typically “C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Player\”.
They compared installation time. Ubuntu was faster.
Mouse clicks in the installation: Ubuntu had less.
Disk space used: Ubuntu used less.
Bootup: Microsoft was faster, Windows 7 being the leader.
Shutdown: Linux was faster.
IO: Linux was faster.
Python: Windows just about edged it.
In the real world it probably doesn’t matter, the vast majority of users will continue on with a Microsoft operating system because the software they want to run and have supported by their local IT team will make this easier. Interesting followup here:
They are blacklisting domains to render in IE7 compatibility mode based upon general usage patterns and by top-level domain. Not whether they work or not.
Internet Explorer team, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Windows 2008 Server is probably the most robust operating system to come out from Microsoft whilst still supporting most of the modern features users demand. The robustness and speed of it is just two of the advantages it has over Vista.
To install on a MacBook Pro its probably easiest to use Windows 2008 Server x86 CD 32bit. 64Bit and bootcamp is not recommended at the moment!
First steps of the installation:
Step one is to start up the bootcamp assistant whilst you are running OS X.
It will take you through the procedure
Put in the DVD when prompted
Follow through the questions asked for the install
When prompted to enter a password make sure to use one of these three: numbers, symbols, capital letters, lower case letters. Password policy is setup on Windows 2008!
It will continue to install and any reboot needed will take you back to the installation
After this is done the OS is installed, but as a workstation OS its a bit of pain to use.
Next steps straight after installation
Start by downloading a webbrowser that you can actually use. IE is quite restricted so to even download something you must go into options and change the privacy options
Insert your Leopard disk and install the drivers that you need, then reboot
From here you can change the resolution of the desktop to the native display resolution
All the steps after this are optional, but are probably good to know:
Enable themes
Open up “Server Manager”
Click “Action”, “Add Features”
Choose “Desktop Experience”
Go into the Service panel
Enable the themes service (its probably disabled, so you need to double click it and enable it
Select a theme by right clicking on the desktop and selecting personalised
Aero theme can be found at:
C:\Windows\Resources\Themes
Enable wireless networking
Open up “Server Manager”
Click “Action”, “Add Features”
Choose “Wireless LAN Service”
Let it install
Enable hibernation
Open up a command prompt and type
powercfg.exe /hibernate on
For more information on turning Windows 2008 into a workstation check out:
Just been using Windows Presentation Foundation ( WPF ) to prototype an application that I am working on and althought Microsoft Expression Blend is a fantastic tool I am finding some frustrating limitations with WPF already. Chiefly amoung these is support for Multiple Document Interfaces or MDI.
I was hoping to create an interface where I could open and close windows within an application ala Photoshop, After Effects, Director or any application in the last 10 years to do with media creation but Microsoft have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that MDI is a no no. Now I don’t mind that Microsoft, Apple or Xerox Parc spend millions of dollars on interface design, further interface human interaction etc. But when the best method of interaction for using an application is disable I get a bit annoyed.
People do find Photoshop hard to use, but the interface to me really does serve its purpose. The problem with Photoshop is actually user education and understanding not the fact that it has multiple dragable windows. Its a hard application to get to grips with (I still find it amusing that users describe themselves as expert at it – those are the users that usually don’t understand it as an application, in fact I would say that anyone that hasn’t played with API doesn’t know photoshop, but hey that is another story..) and that is nothing to do with the interface just that the application has a lot of depth and many ways to do the same thing. While we are on the subject, any user that hasn’t paid the license fee and doesn’t spend hours a day in front of Photoshop can NOT be classed as an expert.
But it is really bugging me that Microsoft have decided that its legions of developers of its next GUI interface paradigm can not choose for themselves the method that they want users to interact with their application. They do not always know best – and there are many examples of this, and saying that there are better ways than using MDI is a chief example. The fact that if you are creating an interface in Visual Studio and want to use MDI is non-trival should speak volumes, but instead we are told to use tab views or a single document model.
What happens when I want users to be able to drag and drop multiple media types of different sources into an application window that they are working on? A tabbed interface doesn’t work in this situation, a single document window certainly doesn’t. How annoying. Thanks Microsoft. Perhaps I should make my application OS X based.
I needed to map a folder on Windows XP to a drive letter to emulate another machine, and looking around for an application that would do this I came across one that has been bundled with Windows since the DOS days: Subst
This handy little util will map any folder to a free drive letter, fire up a cmd shell window and type:
subst e: s:\myfolder\
This will map myfolder to the e:\ drive. Simple as that.
Excellent post here with lots of tips and tricks to make Windows a better experience – or at least make it easier to live with it day to day. It includes:
This is the Digg description “Have you ever run into a “Missing HAL.DLL,” “Invalid Boot.Ini,” or “Windows could not start…” message?
That was when I learned about XP’s built-in “Rebuild” command. It often can easily fix “missing HAL,” “Invalid Boot.Ini,” “Windows could not start…” and similar problems in just a minute or two.”
However this article also gives insight into not only rebuilding but pointers into streamlining installs and reinstalls and other areas users don’t often see with their Windows boxes until too late.
Running an SSH server on windows can be very advantageous particularly when the server has Cygwin running on it. Luckily if you are running Cygwin, it is very easy to start up your own SSH service and run it as a service.
I am currently using it on Windows XP, where it doesnt need quite so many details when it is setting it self up so just check out the ones you need on the instructions.
Just read on the register that VMWare is going to offer a free version of its server product. There is no mention of this on their site yet unless they are talking about the VMWare Player which can be used to host VMware / Microsoft and Symantic virtual PC sessions.
I am really interested to see where they go with this. For instance at home it would make for a really good test system and its a good competitor to Xen running on Linux.
