Feature request for Virtual PC | The Coffeehouse

juliankay

Does anyone else think it would be nice to have some tools for the Virtual Hard Disks so you could copy files in and out of it from Explorer? Or perhaps a way to mount it as a standard Hard Disk?

This would make testing Windows XP Embedded images a lot simpler for me!

Can anyone else think of anything they'd like in Virtual PC?

Manip

I would *very much* like that. Maybe have the ability to mount it as a read-only USB stick drive.

bwill
bwill

Sounds like a good request to post in the Channel 9 Wiki.

juliankay

I've never used a Wiki before! Eeek!

What do I do?

kcostain

As a matter of note, I thought I'd get in on this.

One of the most useful things I'd like to see in Virtual PC would be the ability to mount any CD or DVD image (ISO, BIN/CUE, etc) and not just CD Images (they may support DVD in newer releases) and ISO-based files.

Another thing that VMWare has right is the mounting of multiple devices, mutiple hard drives, up to 4 CDs (or images). These are all very useful features, and even the ability to hot-swap these things. Supporting the building of a virtualized RAID subsystem would also rock.

But, the best and coolest thing I'de like to see in Virtual PC is mounting CD/DVD images and being able to edit them live! That would make the design of a CD perfect for Virtual PC application and even build a niche for Virtual PC.

Just ideas, ideas... ho hum..
Thanks,
Kevin

JROdden

I would really like something like this scenario.. I have many VMs. They take alot of space. I have a base image, with Windows XP, IE7, Opera, Firefox and some other weird 3rd party application. When I need to make a new environment I would have to copy this .vhd and build on that. If I could use this base for every image, and have a small "image" with just the diff to the new image, I would save alot of space. Ie my base image is about 2.2 GB, and the "add-on" image is 300 MB. This means that if I have 3 sets like this, it would take 7.5 GB today. With this strategy implementet it would take 3.1 GB. PS. How do I get CRLF/HTML line break in here? -jr

Andrew Davey
www.aboutcode.net

I usually manually size the VPC window so that it pretty much fills a screen except for the host OS taskbar. This custom resolution is lost when shutting down and then restarting the VPC. It reloads at the closest standard resolution (1024x768) in my case. I have to set the resolultion to be 800x600 in Display Properties and then resize the VPC host window.

Solutions I'd like are:
1) Correctly remember the custom resolution.
2) Implement a maximise button that functions like maximise on regular Win32 windows.
3) Make full screen mode work like Remote Desktop i.e. don't spaz out when clicking back to the host OS. I have two monitors and want to easily move in and out of the VPC.

Andrew Davey
www.aboutcode.net

JROdden wrote:
I would really like something like this scenario.. I have many VMs. They take alot of space. I have a base image, with Windows XP, IE7, Opera, Firefox and some other weird 3rd party application. When I need to make a new environment I would have to copy this .vhd and build on that. If I could use this base for every image, and have a small "image" with just the diff to the new image, I would save alot of space. Ie my base image is about 2.2 GB, and the "add-on" image is 300 MB. This means that if I have 3 sets like this, it would take 7.5 GB today. With this strategy implementet it would take 3.1 GB. PS. How do I get CRLF/HTML line break in here? -jr

I'd like to only have to run windows update on the base image and not on *every* VPC I use Smiley

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JROdden wrote:
I would really like something like this scenario.. I have many VMs. They take alot of space. I have a base image, with Windows XP, IE7, Opera, Firefox and some other weird 3rd party application. When I need to make a new environment I would have to copy this .vhd and build on that. If I could use this base for every image, and have a small "image" with just the diff to the new image, I would save alot of space. Ie my base image is about 2.2 GB, and the "add-on" image is 300 MB. This means that if I have 3 sets like this, it would take 7.5 GB today. With this strategy implementet it would take 3.1 GB. PS. How do I get CRLF/HTML line break in here? -jr

Maybe someone should take a good look at the Virtual Disk Wizard...

All you have to do is create a differencing disk (using the Virtual Disk Wizard), specify a base image, and go. Do note that this is separate and apart from Undo disks, this doesn't give you the option of merging your changes every time you close Virtual PC.

TimP

Even though this thread is about 2.5 years old, VMware Workstation 6 is adding support to mount virtual hard drives on Windows and map them to a drive letter so you can copy files to and from them. I wonder if you can only do that on NTFS virtual hard drives or on ext3, too.

JasonOlson

If you use Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 (also a free download and supports running multiple VMs at once unlike Virtual PC) there is a tool to mount a VHD to the host OS that can then be modified in-place on the host OS.

I think Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 is still in Beta though although you should be able to grab the beta just fine. That's what I'm using and haven't had a problem yet.

P.S. Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta?!?!? We (Microsoft) really need to learn to name products :/