I finally got the Virtual PC upgrade edition. I did this primarily so I could move the virutal PCs from my Powerbook off to my G5 for better performance. Long-time readers will remember I have two guests: Windows 2000 and FreeBSD.
Installing Virtual PC is straightforward enough. One thing about it is that, like Office, it tries to broadcast its license key on the LAN to detect duplicates. If you don't want it to do this, just do this:
sudo ipfw add 10 drop udp from any to any 21790
This goes along with the line for Office v.X:
sudo ipfw add 11 drop udp from any to any 2222
I don't need to do any of this stuff, simply because I don't illegally copy software. Even Microsoft's.
Back to the matter at hand. Upgrading the Windows 2000 guest was actually more difficult than upgrading the FreeBSD guest. When you import the Windows 2000 guest, it starts up without a working keyboard and mouse. You just have to let it sit at the login prompt for about 10 minutes watching the disk icon blink. During this time it is making note of the hardware changes. Once you feel you've waited long enough, select 'shut down' from the PC menu, and tell it to "shut down windows 2000". This will shut down Windows the nice way, which will save the changes it made. The next time you start up, you should have control of the machine. Install the new VPC additions and everything will be fine from then on. After installing the new VPC additions, do not let Windows reboot on its own. There is some sort of bug that will get you into a BSOD loop. You need to power off the virtual machine and turn it back on. Once the new VPC additions are in, this is no longer an issue.
The only trick to FreeBSD that hasn't been discussed on this site before is the new USB support in Virtual PC. When I first tried to boot the FreeBSD guest (which I think is running 5.2.1), it hung trying to probe the USB host controllers. The fix is to go into the PC settings and disable USB support. I'll upgrade the guest to 5.3 and give it another try later on. Once it booted, I was able to start X with the exact same configuration as before.
More on VPC7: I actually now finally have a real use for Virtual PC! My wife bought me a very cool Christmas present (we can never wait for Christmas Day to give 'em) - a Navman iCN 510 GPS mapping handheld. It came with all of the maps for North America on CD, and they only have Windows software to get those maps into the unit. I was able to connect it via its USB cable to the mac, tell Virtual PC to "own" that device, and then use a combination of their desktop app and ActiveSync (this thing runs WinCE under the covers, but you don't really see that as you use it) to upload the maps. The upload process is horribly slow (I place the blame for that squarely on ActiveSync), but it did work.
The only tricky bit is that ActiveSync's installer hangs at 92% for a very, very long time. You just have to trust it and walk away for a bit. When you come back, there is a window that walks you through connecting up the device.
One more thing... Just a general FreeBSD upgrade note. For X to work after upgrading from 5.2 to 5.3 you must either compile into the kernel or load the modules for 'mem' and 'io'. This is so the X server can access /dev/mem and /dev/io.
Exactly how do I "simply" do this"
sudo ipfw add 10 drop udp from any to any 21790
Thanks for any help
Posted by: Valerie at March 3, 2005 01:05 AMYou open up a terminal window and type or paste those commands in.
Please tell me in very simple terms how to get my Cable modem to work in VPC and my Epson C60 printer even though it shows ready after 30 minutes still didn't print out a test page any help will be greatly appreciated.
thanks, Michael
Hi I never went through this ...
The only tricky bit is that ActiveSync's installer hangs at 92% for a very, very long time. You just have to trust it and walk away for a bit. When you come back, there is a window that walks you through connecting up the device.
what do you mean by a long long time ... I have waited about 20 min and nothing than loud fan noises happend ...
is that normal?
and using win98, nothing worked at all .. by the way, I own a PocketLoox 718, and I would realy like to install software using VPC
Posted by: Pinsel at June 30, 2005 04:54 PMI am also waiting, waiting, waiting for the hang. I have tried several times with zero result.
Is there some ideas why this is doing the chicken?
thanks
Posted by: James McFarlane at August 28, 2005 08:23 AMI have a 1gb sd card in my icn510 and it hung 2 hours at 92% on my wife's compaq/windows computer.
I just installed Virtual PC7 on my new Mac, and I am afraid to try syncing the Navman. The 1GB SD card holds everything east of the Mississippi River and then some. Navman does not reccomend anything bigger than 256 or 512. Has anyone tried a 2GB or 4GB SD card on the navman icn510?
Posted by: dave coon at January 18, 2006 05:41 PM