The Soul of a Virtual Machine : Tips and Tricks

Displaying a virtual machine in a PowerPoint presentation

megand — Wed, 25 May 2005 23:32:00 GMT

Did you know that you can display your virtual machine from within a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation? Here's how:

On a computer with Virtual Server installed, open Microsoft Powerpoint.
On a PowerPoint slide, click "Insert," and then click "Object."
Select "Create new" (the default), in the list click "Microsoft Virtual Server VMRC Control," and then click "OK."
Double-click the object on the slide. This opens Microsoft Visual Basic.
On the left side of the screen, configure properties, so your target virtual machine displays. A list of what you have to configure is below.
When finished configuring properties, save the changes in Visual Basic and go back to the PowerPoint slide.
Click the slideshow icon and click "Yes" until the virtual machine displays. If the display shows "No connection," click "Remote Control," click "Connect To Server," and then specify the virtual machine.

Properties to configure in Visual Basic:

Height: Height of the virtual machine display space. I started with 400, and it looks OK on my screen.

Left: Space between the virtual machine display and the left side of the slide. I set it at 50.

ServerAddress: Name of the computer running Virtual Server. I tried connecting to a remote instance of Virtual Server and wasn't able to get it to work. If you can figure this out, please post a comment, so we'll all know.

ServerDisplayName: Name of the virtual machine.

ServerPort: VMRC port, 5900 by default.

Top: Distance from the top of the slide for the virtual machine display. I set it at 50.

UserDomain: Domain, if you're in one.

UserName: Your user name.

Width: Width of the virtual machine display. I set mine at 600.

Note: I'm doing this on a machine that has every possible Microsoft product on it. I assume this will also work for you. If it doesn't please let me know and I'll figure out what's up.

Tip: Accessing remote resources via UNC

megand — Thu, 12 May 2005 01:14:00 GMT

If you have a virtual machine configured on one computer and want to access a resource (such as an ISO or a VHD) on a different physical computer via a UNC path, you have three choices, listed below. The first two are covered in the documentation. The third is not, so consider it your tip for today.

Enable Basic authentication on the Virtual Server Administration Website.
Configure constrained delegation.
Create a local account on the computer that hosts the resource you want to access, and then configure the virtual machine to run under that user account (for instructions, see "Modifying general virtual machine properties" in the Virtual Server 2005 Administrator's Guide).

Tip: Opening the Administration Website over a remote connection

megand — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 20:46:00 GMT

If you're connected to Virtual Server over a Terminal Services or Remote Desktop connection, you'll get a "Page cannot be displayed" error if you try to launch the Administration Website from the shortcut on the Start menu. Instead, you can provide this URL in Internet Explorer: http://server_IP_address:VS_port, where server_IP_address is the IP address of the computer running Virtual Server and VS_port is the port number assigned to Virtual Server, 1024 by default.

Alternatively, you can remote into the computer running Virtual Server and access the Administration Website in one step. To do this, click Start > Run, and then type: mstsc /v:server_IP_address /console.

Tip: Turning off the virtual machine beep

megand — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 19:55:42 GMT

If you want to turn off the beep that sounds when you turn on a virtual machine, you can run the following two commands. The first stops the BEEP service and the second disables it on subsequent reboots.

net stop beep

sc config beep start= disabled

(Be sure to include a space after the = sign.)

Tip: Speeding up application installation

megand — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 18:04:13 GMT

If you want your applications to install more quickly in a virtual machine, do this: After you install the guest operating system, install Virtual Machine Additions, restart the virtual machine, and then install the applications.

Tip: How an app can discover it's running in a virtual machine

megand — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 04:21:00 GMT

Here's a tip from Paul Adare (author of Paul's Digital Lounge and Cigar Bar). If you want an application to discover it's running in a virtual machine, you can do the following:

You could query the registry for the existence of the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Virtual Machine key. Or you could use an WMI query, such as this:

On Error Resume Next

strComputer = "."

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root
\cimv2")

Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32
_BaseBoard",,48)

For Each objItem in colItems

if objitem.Product = "Virtual Machine"

Tip: Changing a VHD from IDE to SCSI

megand — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 04:09:00 GMT

You can easily change your virtual hard disk (VHD) attachment from IDE to SCSI:

Shut down the guest operating system.
Add a SCSI adapter to the virtual machine, if one isn't already available (under "Virtual Machine" Configuration, click SCSI adapters and then click Add).
Turn on the virtual machine and verify in Device Manager that the Microsof Virtual Machine PCI SCSI Controller is installed (it should be listed under SCSI and RAID controllers).
Shut down the guest operating system and change the attachment of the VHD from IDE to SCSI (under "Virtual Machine" Configuration, click Hard disks and in the Attachment box, select the appropriate attachment).
Turn on the virtual machine.