Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Tweak your mouse sensitivity in Windows virtual machines

I doubt a lot of virtualization fans is having this issue on most of the virtualization platform. This is not a major issue, but it is quite annoying and it will lower down your mouse pointer sensitivity. It is very hard for you to do testing or manage the Windows virtual machine if you cannot move your mouse pointer smoothly. Recently I just realized how to solve it from a friend of mine. Before this I would like to share this post with my friend, Wayne Lee King Lek. Thanks for him to share this knowledge with me.

Here is the step by step how to encounter the issue mentioned above:
  1. At your Windows VM desktop, right click your mouse, and then go to Properties.
  2. Browse to Settings tab, and then click on Advanced button at the right bottom.
  3. Click on the Troubleshoot tab, adjust the Hardware acceleration to Full.

Thats all for this small trick. Hope this post will help you all. :)

Monday, September 15, 2008

Linux X-Windows cannot display properly on virtual machine

When you try to install Suse Linux or Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Microsoft virtualization environment (Virtual PC 2007, Virtual Server 2005 R2, or Hyper-V), you might not be able to boot into run-level 5 or execute the X-Windows even you already appllied the virtual machine addition for linux on those system.

Here, we would like to share out some tips for you to encounter this issue:
  • Suse Linux
  1. Start your Suse in run-level 3.
  2. Type "sax2 -r" command when the system is startup.
  3. After that a screen resolution test will launch, click "OK" to accept the new sax configuration.
  4. Then, start your X-Windows system.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (or Fedora Core)
  1. During the operating system installation, select "Thousand of Colors" for your screen resolution instead of "Million of Colors".
Hope this post is helpful. :)

Monday, September 1, 2008

Virtualization support

Recently, met up with few customer that interested with microsoft virtualization solution. However, they have different opinion and understanding. To share with you guys:

1) Yes, you will need Windows 2008 CAL to run Windows 2008 Hyper-V - however you need to understand this CAL is not just for Hyper-V - you can then run Windows 2008 other features, eg: Domain controller with RODC, serverCore +++

2) Lots of people did mention that Hyper-V do not support Windows 2000 as its virtual machine. It does, you will need SP4 and only support 1 proc. Check the guest operating system supports for Hyper-V:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954958/en-us

3) Other Microsoft product supported in other virtualization technology? Well, hopefully all in the near future. See what Microsoft would say: Its support policy.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615/