This is the long awaited 3rd post in the 4 part series about VMware Player.

The power of VMware player is the ability to build your own operating system images. With a few minutes time, you can install most any x86 operating system, boot it up and be online.

Part 1. How to install VMware Player
Part 2. How to use standard VMware Images, from the VMware Application Vault.
Part 3. Building your own custom images
Part 4. Using VMware software for physical to virtual conversion

Here is the checklist of software you may want to have before starting this process.

1. ISO image or Installation CD (I prefer the ISO’s, faster, easier, and more flexible)
1.a. bittorrent, used to download Linux ISO’s or other files (We don’t promote piracy)
1.b. ISO Recorder, this allows you to create ISO’s from folders. (more on this later) Download here

The 2 files you will need are the VMX and VMDK. The easiest way to get these files is to visit:

Note: I have talked to Havard at easyVMX, and he told me he may be changing his site, when and if that happens I will post a direct download link to a configured Zip file.

OR

Download VMX Builder, and use the simple Windows GUI to generate the files you need. The gui allows for precise configurations, much more so then EasyVMX, but may seem over whelming to first time users. The nice feature is that you can run VMware directly from the builder to test your files.

There are some other tutorials and Tools out there, some are dated, but others offer more detail:
J_K9 @ Linux » HOW TO: Run Other OSes On Your PC
CrystalDawn.net - Custom PHP Scripts » VMWare Player
VMware Utilities Homepage

There are already enough Linux images out there, covering all the bases. What isn’t easily available online is Microsoft Windows based images. I’m going to walk through the creation, installation, and use of Windows 3.11.

I read online somewhere that if you still own the original Windows 3.11 and Dos 6.22 floppy disks it is legal to posses a digital format or version on CD. I haven’t been able to find that page again, but I’m going under the understanding that since I still have many copies of Windows 3.11, that is acceptable to use Windows 3.11 with as an iso file.

Step 1. Create a folder for your virtual machines, then sub folder for each machine.

I created a folder on my desktop, called “Virtual Machines”, then the sub folder “Windows3.1″

Step 2. Copy the windows 3.11 and Dos 6.2 ISO files into the “Windows3.1″ folder

Step 3. Download the correct VMX and VMDK files from EasyVMX.

To download the basic zip package, check out this link: 500MB drive, 32MB ram, and Windows 3.1, all you need to do now is modify the VMX for your situation.

Step 4. Extract the Zip files into your “Windows3.1″ folder.

Step 5. Open the My_Virtual_Machine.vmx in your favorite text editor.

I recommend Notepad 2, download here: Notepad 2

Step 6. Here is the contents of the My_Virtual_Machine.vmx file.

The bold lines are items you will want to change.

#!/usr/bin/vmplayer

# Filename: My_Virtual_Machine.vmx
# Generated 2007-02-24;23:12:41 by EasyVMX! Super Simple Edition
# http://www.easyvmx.com

# This is a Workstation 5 or 5.5 config file
# It can be used with Player
config.version = “8″
virtualHW.version = “4″

# Selected operating system for your virtual machine
guestOS = “win31″

# displayName is your own name for the virtual machine
displayName = “My_Virtual_Machine”

# These fields are free text description fields
annotation = “Virtual Machine created with EasyVMX! Super Simple Edition”
guestinfo.vmware.product.url = “http://www.easyvmx.com”
guestinfo.vmware.product.class = “virtual machine”

# Number of virtual CPUs. Your virtual machine will not
# work if this number is higher than the number of your physical CPUs
numvcpus = “1″

# Memory size and other memory settings
memsize = “32″
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = “FALSE”
MemTrimRate = “-1″

# Unique ID for the virtual machine will be created
uuid.action = “create”

# Remind to install VMware Tools
# This setting has no effect in VMware Player
tools.remindInstall = “TRUE”

# Startup hints interfers with automatic startup of a virtual machine
# This setting has no effect in VMware Player
hints.hideAll = “TRUE”

# Enable time synchronization between computer
# and virtual machine
tools.syncTime = “TRUE”

# USB settings
# This config activates USB
usb.present = “TRUE”
usb.generic.autoconnect = “FALSE”

# First serial port, physical COM1 is available
serial0.present = “TRUE”
serial0.fileName = “Auto Detect”
serial0.autodetect = “TRUE”
serial0.hardwareFlowControl = “TRUE”

# First parallell port, physical LPT1 is available
# It is set to bidirectional for more functionality
parallel0.present = “TRUE”
parallel0.fileName = “Auto Detect”
parallel0.autodetect = “TRUE”
parallel0.bidirectional = “TRUE”

# Sound settings
sound.present = “TRUE”
sound.virtualdev = “sb16″

# Logging
# This config activates logging, and keeps last log
logging = “TRUE”
log.fileName = “My_Virtual_Machine.log”
log.append = “TRUE”
log.keepOld = “1″

# These settings decides interaction between your
# computer and the virtual machine
isolation.tools.hgfs.disable = “FALSE”
isolation.tools.dnd.disable = “FALSE”
isolation.tools.copy.enable = “TRUE”
isolation.tools.paste.enabled = “TRUE”

# First network interface card
# This config activates this NIC by default
ethernet0.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.connectionType = “nat”
ethernet0.addressType = “generated”
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = “0″
ethernet0.virtualDev = “vlance”

# Settings for physical floppy drive
floppy0.present = “FALSE”

# Settings for physical CDROM drive
ide1:0.present = “TRUE”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-raw”
ide1:0.startConnected = “TRUE”
ide1:0.fileName = “auto detect”
ide1:0.autodetect = “TRUE”

# First IDE disk
# This disk image is selected by default
ide0:0.present = “TRUE”
ide0:0.fileName = “My_Virtual_Machine.vmdk”
ide0:0.mode = “persistent”
ide0:0.startConnected = “TRUE”
ide0:0.writeThrough = “TRUE”

# LiveCD
ide1:1.present = “TRUE”
ide1:1.fileName = “MS-DOS 6.22.iso”
ide1:1.deviceType = “cdrom-image”
ide1:1.startConnected = “TRUE”
ide1:1.mode = “persistent”

# END OF EasyVMX! CONFIG
Explanation of the VMX files

Each of the bold lines should be changed. I recommend setting Serial, Parallel, USB and Sound all to FALSE. My laptop doesn’t have LPT1 or COM1, plus Windows 3.11 doesn’t support USB. The biggest change is the CD rom lines. Because I used the a ISO image, I disable the physical CD rom drive. If you are going to be using your own physical CD skip this step. I disabled the physical CD, by setting it to FALSE, then I changed the ide1.1 to ide0:1. The last thing to change is make sure the ISO name matches the MS Dos ISO you will be using, my file is named: “MS-DOS 6.22.iso”

Step 7. We are ready to launch the VMware Player.

If you have setup VMware Player correctly, double clicking on the VMX icon should launch the player. Here is a screenshot of VMware player booting up for the first time:

Step 8. Complete Microsoft Dos 6.22 Installation.

This installation should only take a few minutes, it took longer for my French Press to brew, if all goes well. If you have any issues with the formating the drive because the installer keeps looking for a floppy disk e:, you can exit the wizard and use fdisk and format from the command prompt (don’t you remember how to do that?)

Step 9. The tricky part is getting CD support.

It happens that the ISO I have, was modified to include generic CD drivers, as part of a boot menu. The second time you boot the Virtual Machine, it asks if you wish to install those drivers. Go ahead and do that, saves alot of trouble down the road.

Step 10. Time to load Windows 3.11, Steps are getting harder now.

If you have ever loaded 3.11 in the past, this will be your fastest install ever. If you haven’t it may be the slowest. First thing you need to do is boot the system for the 3rd time (2nd was to install cd drivers). You arrive at the command prompt. Yeah life is good. Enter d:\setup.exe and the setup should start. O yeah, might help if you actually setup VMware Player to load the windows CD ISO. Shutdown the player, open the VMX file, and edit the line: ide1:1.fileName = “MS-DOS 6.22.iso” to ide1:1.fileName = “windows 311.iso”, or what is correct for your ISO. Boot the Player backup, and now run the setup. Walk through the installation, estimated time, in a few minutes. NOTE: don’t worry about the network, we need to install drivers so will take care of this in a few steps.

Step 11. Running Windows for the first time.

Don’t PANIC. Windows 3.11 doesn’t start automatically. If everything went right you should be back to the command prompt. type win and hit enter. Welcome to the world of Windows 3.11 inside of a Virtual Machine

Notice: If you are just following along for fun, then you can stop now. But if you really want to go retro and browse the web on Windows 3.11 continue on. This is great fun to mess with peoples log files. Or if you really want to have fun with tech support. Try ordering from Amazon.com or Dell.com with Windows 3.11 ( I don’t recomend this, due to low or poor encryption technology incorporated into older versions of web browsers)

Step 12. Additional Drivers ISO.

When researching this article I came across a great site, which put together all the files needed for networking on VMware Player. The files is located at Tony’s VMware Site. The one problem is that I find it easiest to load files into a Virtual Machine with an ISO file. How do you get them into an ISO file? With ISO Recorder, once installed on windows it adds a awesome option to the right click menu of Windows XP. “Create ISO Image File”, right click on any folder, create the iso. you now have 2 choices, burn the ISO to a CD or you can just load the CD into the Virtual Environment, by adjusting the CD source line: ide0:1.fileName = “Windows 3.11.iso” change it to ide0:1.fileName = “WindowsDRIVERS.iso” or whatever you need to do.

Step 13. Loading the drivers inside of Windows 3.11

Just follow the instructions on Tony’s VMware Site. He does a great job of walking through the process and this post is getting long enough.

Step 14. Now wait, why is my CPU maxed out running Windows 3.11?

Maybe you noticed that your CPU is maxed out? Well you aren’t alone. This post here explains it all pretty well. At this point I decided to take advantage of the networking inside of Windows 3.11 and moved files over using a shared folder. It works the same way as Windows 95/98 so it is pretty easy to setup. The files you will need to fix the cpu is can be found at Software - Weiqi Gao.com. More information on this site QEMU: The Open Source Processor Emulator - Weiqi Gao’s Observations

Step 15. Last step, time to install Netscape Navigator.

To get online you need to have a web browser. So time to download the browser. I found a few copies of Netscape available at this website Cintek.com - Netscape Download Page

Sources:

EasyVMX.com
ISO Recorder
VMware DOS and Windows 3.x Installation Notes
J_K9 @ Linux » HOW TO: Run Other OSes On Your PC
CrystalDawn.net - Custom PHP Scripts » VMWare Player
VMware Utilities Homepage
Cintek.com - Netscape Download Page
QEMU: The Open Source Processor Emulator - Weiqi Gao’s Observations

It has been reported by anyone that read the EULA for Vista that Microsoft doesn’t want you using it in a virtual environment. They will allow virtualization of the ultimate and enterprise edition, or if your version is licensed through MSDN or similar program. For any mac owner out there who might think they can go into the store, slap down some money on Parallels, another couple hundred for Vista home and be all set, sorry to say, but nope. By installing Vista Home you have violated the EULA and in Microsoft’s eyes they would have preferred not to have your money.. wait that makes no sense? Why would a person with a computer who is willing to go out and buy a second operating system for it be evil in Microsoft’s eyes? Well according to the most recent news:

The less expensive versions of Vista actually would work in virtualization programs. But Microsoft wants to restrict it because of new security holes spawned by the technology, according to Scott Woodgate, a director in Microsoft’s Vista team.

Lately Intel and rival chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. have built virtualization-friendly hooks directly into microprocessors. The goal was to make virtualization work better, but Woodgate argues that the move created a security flaw — essentially that malicious programs can run undetected alongside an operating system.

Microsoft had considered banning virtualization on Vista all together, but decided it was “safe” for corporate or power users to virtualize the operating system.

Microsoft, you released Virtual PC for Free, allowed people to build, distribute and use their own virtual machines. But now you are getting greedy. Virtualization is the future, and you are afraid of it because it allows choices.

Sources:
Seattle PI

If you have installed VMware player, then you have a few new services. Now, I don’t like new services, and I really don’t like services that start automatically EVERYTIME I turn on my computer, but the kicker is, VMWare player isn’t smart enough to start them itself if they are stopped. So I’m stuck, do I let them run in the background constantly or do I start them up in the service manger every time. Nope, I, like any good sysadmin, wrote a batch file.

I have 2 batch files, Service start, and Service stop:

startVMPlayer.bat

sc start vmount2
sc start “VMware NAT Service”
sc start “VMnetDHCP”
sc start “VMAuthdService”

stopVMPlayer.bat

sc stop vmount2
sc stop “VMware NAT Service”
sc stop “VMnetDHCP”
sc stop “VMAuthdService”

Pretty simple, just open notepad, paste the 4 lines of code into each file, and save onto your desktop or quick launch bar. I find this very helpful for dealing with poorly written software which doesn’t include it’s own service control functions. The other problem with VMware Player, if the services aren’t running, you don’t even get an error message. Causes some strange issues on reloading a paused image, where the networking was enabled the first time. So, VMware please add some better service support for your player software.

Recently Microsoft has release Virtual PC 2007. This is their lightweight virtualization platform. Why do I qualify it as “lightweight”?

Because I have created the categories for virtualization software. I have decided on three classes of virtualization software: Lightweight, Server, and Enterprise.

Lightweight runs on top of a standard operating system, and only allows 1 virtual machine per executable.
Server runs on top of a standard operating system but can concurrently run multiple virtual machines.
Enterprise this requires either a customization of the kernel (such as OpenVZ), unique hardware requirements including Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) or AMD Virtualization (AMD-V™) hardware assist or a bare metal system with a custom operating system installed on it.

These qualifications may change, but they do a nice job of laying out the major features and differences between virtualization technology.

Here is my initial map of virtualization software:

Lightweight
VMware Player
VMware Fusion
Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
Parallels Desktop
Parallels Workstation

Server
VMware Server
VMware Workstation (moved from lightweight, due to misunderstanding)
Microsoft Virtual Server 2k5 RC1

Enterprise
SWsoft Virtuozzo
OpenVZ
VMware ESX server
Xensource Xen Enterprise
Xensource Xen Server
Xensource Xen Express
Virtual Iron

If you have any thoughts, suggestions or feedback please post a comment. I will reply to any feedback and look forward to adding more software to this list as the industry grows.

Qemu has been removed, and listed as “Emulation Software”

Catching up on the virtualization news this morning, I came across an article by Brian Krebs. He just recently installed Vista onto a parallels on a Intel based mac. Congratulations. I think you have made the jump. You bought a Mac. You are using Virtualization Technology. And you have missed the point about using Parallels. What applies in enterprise security doesn’t always apply in the home. Most mac users are home or schools. According to Business Week Online, 25% of Apple sales are academic. Really, how many schools will be running parallels? People are going to run Parallels to make virtualization, Windows, and OSX as easy as possible. They don’t want to spend time looking for a option panel to be able to see their desktop. They generally want to drag and drop between operating systems. The more transparent the virtualization the better it is accepted.

Here is a direct quote from the Brian Krebs article:

In response, a number of online threats will check to see if they’re being run in VMware or some other kind of virtual environment. If the answer is yes, those viruses or worms generally refuse to run, in an effort to escape analysis and live longer, undetected, in the wild.

How would this be possible? Parallels is a full install of Windows inside of a virtual environment. The idea of virtualization is that it is transparent to the end user and operating system. Unless someone exploits a major loophole. The simplest one I could think of is checking the mac address. Which isn’t too hard, the same hack could be used to focus on any hardware. For example. a mac address of “00:14:51:cb:ef:af” could be known to be a apple because, the beginning is the vendor ID.

Here are a few vendor ID’s associated with Apple:

00:0A:27 Apple Computer, Inc.
00:0A:95 Apple Computer, Inc.
00:0D:93 Apple Computer
00:11:24 Apple Computer
00:14:51 Apple Computer Inc. (Source)

The same “MAC Address” exploit could be used, even without parallels to focus on every Mac. But really, what percent of the market does Parallels make up? probably less then 1% of the Computer Industry as a whole. If people won’t write viruses for the 7% Mac market share, why would they write a virus for Parallels?

Sources:
Washington Post Security Article
BW Online

Ever go looking for a particular Virtual Machine? Did you want a Solaris 9 VM? Or something a little more obscure, like OS/2? Now you have a easy way to find your virtual machine:

Enomaly is proud to announce the launch of VMfind.com, an online community & search network for virtualization technology with a focus on, pre-configured virtual appliances, tech papers, documentation, forums and blogs.

O wait, nope. It is just a Google Coop. Nolthing special there, I was over excited at the idea, of having a search like this, but quickly disappointed. (Here is how I would do it, this is a mockup, not an actual feature yet, but would be pretty easy to implement):

There are a large variety of sources for your Virtual Machines. Currently VMware is the most trusted, especially for VM compatible images. I’m sure VMFind.com will refine there site, and make it a very usable and simple search tool. Until then, I think I may just stick with some carefully crafted google strings.

I’m postponing the 3rd and 4th part in the long awaited VMware player posts. I have decided to upgrade my hardware to create more usable experience. My current laptop only has 512 meg of ram, which is shared for the video and main system operations. I’m ordering the following upgrade, and expect to have it by the end of the week.

It will be nice having 2 gig of ram, more power, more speed. Recently as I have been getting into more Photoshop this laptop has really been lagging. Now, try loading up virtual environments which want 512 or more, not going to work.

My tax return is going towards the mother of visual drool equipment.

UltraSharp 2407WFP Wide-Screen Black Flat Panel Monitor, LCD with Height Adjustable Stand

I expect it in a few weeks. It isn’t the 30″, but most laptops and most desktops don’t have the dual DVI power for 30″ of visual display. The reason why I like the 24, compared to the 20, 22, or 27 is the native resolution matches my laptop, and most systems I have looked at recently, including the Mac Mini.

Mac mini 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo

The Mac Mini is going to be a great addition to my hardware arsenal. I’m just waiting for them to release the Mac Mini Intel Core 2 Duo. It won’t be long, I expect it in June at WWDC. Mac OSX, Vista, XP, Linux, VMware, Virtual PC, all inside a small little box. Easy to transport, fun to look at, and wireless. I most likely will run it headless, using VNC or Remote Desktop. Then I can just have it sitting on a shelf, no keyboard, no mouse, no monitor. Just sitting there purring away.

This is the 2nd in a 4 part series outlining the installation, configuration, modification, and use of VMware Player. Part one is located here part 1 of 4. part 3 of 4 is done now too

If you think virtualization is hard, you haven’t tried appliance images yet. VMware has release a free player for virtualization images. It can be downloaded at the following site VMware Player download. If you have never installed it before, check out the previous post, step by step installation instructions.

The first piece of software you may need, besides VMware player, is a BitTorrent client. This is a downloading application, which uses a style of peer to peer file sharing to download files faster and easier. Instead of downloading the VMX and VMDK files directly from VMware, this allows you to download it from local computers (across the street, across town, across the state possibly), at much faster speeds. There are a variety of clients available, check out this site for a solid list bittorrent program list.

Once you have installed the bittorrent client, you can now visit VMware’s Application Marketplace. Visit The Application Marketplace is located here.

When you first open an VMware image zipped folder, you will generally find 2 major files, VMX and VMDK. The first, VMX, is the text configuration file. Approx 15 to 35 lines of configuration options. These files I will cover in more details in the next post, as you will need to understand how to adjust them as you create your own virtual machines. The other file(s) is the hard drive image. These files expand to meet the needs. When you create an hard drive image, it will start out as a few K and expand as you install an os. There are additional files which are generated during execution of the player, they are lck files and lock the hard drive image and configuration files. There are also nvram, vmware.log, vmem (with a random file name, 564da975-81a2-07fa-f6f5-ac52d4897757.vmem), and vmsd. You don’t have to worry about these other files yet, just double click on the VMX to load up the player.

I downloaded 3 Different Appliance Images for testing. FreeNAS, Haiku, and RedHat 6.2, all of these we extremely easy to get up and running in no time. It really it as simple as download, unzip and boot. (I did download Freedos, but was unable to get into the gui, so I left it out of this tutorial)

Let’s first look at FreeNAS, a VMware image of FreeNAS. This is a open source Linux based networked attached storage tool. I loaded it up and within a few seconds got the following prompt:

According to the websites PDF for quick installation:

· Select 1 and enter the name of your Ethernet Interface (fxp0 in my case, yours may be
different)
· Press at the Optional 1 Interface prompt, Select Y and reboot the PC.
· Once the computer has rebooted and the menu is up again, select 2 and enter your IP Address
settings (192.168.8.128 and /24 in my example).
· Once the menu is up, select 6 and ping another device on the subnet and ensure network
connectivity is OK.
(read more)

Once setup, you can now minimize the VMware player, and open a web browser. Enter in the ip address you setup in the previous step, and you have the cool web interface:

Next Image, the easiest overall. Quick simple

“Haiku is an open-source desktop operating system focusing on usability, innovation, and speed. The first release will be an improved remake of BeOS R5, but we have completely new ideas for the future. Haiku is currently under development and making steady progress towards its first release.”

I found it a fun, quick jump into BeOS. Here is a screenshot:

I didn’t do much with it, but it booted right up, let me click around and play. No long installation or rebooting to a live cd at all.

The last, and possibly most recognized image I tested was RedHat 6.2. This image is a server installation was chosen during creation of the image. I have used Red Hat a few times before, so I took advantage of testing the included apache server.

This is a screenshot of firefox, on my laptop, connected to the apache server inside of the virtual machine:

The next post in this series will explain how to build your own images. This is where the power lies. With a few quick downloads I had windows 3.1 up and running. Tune in later this week for the details. If you have any questions, please leave a comment or e-mail me directly.

According to Microsoft, circa October 27, 2005, they will not support non-Microsoft virtualization solutions. My question is, when does that come up in conversation? If I was calling tech support the last thing I want to tell them is anything about the computer in front of me, besides information directly related to the problem. If I’m having a problem with Office, I don’t tell them the version of Internet Explorer I’m running. So why would I tell them I’m running their software inside of a virtual machine. That sounds like telling your internet provider you are trying to dial online with a Sega Dreamcast. Lets look at a possible noob tech support call:

Tech: Hello, thank you for waiting, how can I help you?
Noob: Yeah, I just bought a new mac pro system, downloaded a beta of parallels, and installed a pirated version of Vista. Then I borrowed a Office CD from a friend, and I can’t seem to get it to save to my Apple iPod as an external hard drive. Any reason why it won’t let me?
Tech: I’m sorry wrong number. Click.

Ok, maybe not like that, but a growing number of computer users have adopted virtualization as a way to make their life easier. Parallels software allows Mac users to boot up windows and run office in a native operating system. As a web developer it is crucial to test your site in as many browser as you expect visitors to be using. I took the opportunity today to boot up Knoppix inside of VM Player just to see how it looked. The site looked good. Now, Knoppix is a live cd, and I could have burned a copy, rebooted by computer, tweaked the wireless settings, got the webpage open, and saw it and rebooted back into Windows. Or booted the VM Player, open the browser, and been done. But I would have had to reboot to make any changes and then boot back into Knoppix, but with Virtualization I can just hit F5, and reload the page inside of Knoppix after making changes on the Windows desktop. This is where the draw to virtualization on the desktop is, having multiple operating systems running concurrently. If I can ALT+TAB between major operating systems then life is good.

Microsoft has changed opened up some, in the past 2 years. With the release of Vista, they now allow Virtualization of the operating system. If you purchased Ultimate, they allow you to virtualization the os, and if you where lucky enough to have Ultimate Enterprise you can virtualize upto 4 VM’s from that 1 original media. Now, why? If I want to virtualize an environment I want to run the cleanest simplest one possible. The whole idea of paravirtualization is to only duplicate the fluff and keep the core pure. Why would I want to virtualize an operating system with the following requirements:

Windows XP Hardware Requirements:

* System Requirements : PC with 300 megahertz (MHz) or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233-MHz minimum required;* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
* 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
* 1.5 gigabyte (GB) of available hard disk space.*
* Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher resolution video adapter and monitor
* CD-ROM or DVD drive
* Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device (source)

Windows Vista Ultimate Requirements (Recommended):

* Processor 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
* System Memory 1 GB of system memory.
* GPU SVGA (1024×768)
* Graphics Memory 128mb and aero compatible
* Hard Drive 40GB
* Hard Drive Free Space 15GB
* Optical Drive DVD-RW
* Audio Yes
* Internet 1mb + connection (source)

If I’m going to virtualize a desktop environment for general testing, I think XP Home sounds like a much more efficient solution. Vista recommends almost as much ram as XP requires hard drive space. Microsoft had planned to release a Hypervisor and paravirtualized version of 2k and 2k3 server by some reports shortly after “longhorn server”, actual release date is still unknown. What will this mean for SWsoft, who’s currently marketing the only other version of paralized windows? Does Microsoft just want to dominate all aspects of the Virtualization Market? Time and next quarters stock holders statements will tell.

Sources:
Microsoft Support Policy Article ID: 897615

These are step by step directions for the installation of VMware player.

Prerequisites: Download the executable, directly from VMware. You must agree to their terms of service and privacy policy at VMware’s website.

Step 1. Launch the executable

Step 2. Click next

Step 3. Choose the installation path, most people the default will be fine

Step 4. Choose the location of the shortcuts the install will place all over your computer

Step 5. Now comes the complicated part, do you want to disable autorun? Depending how much you use the player, you can always disable it later, but if you forget that you disabled it, it could make your life more difficult later. Also, probably recommended to uncheck the lower box. That is your own choice, but I run firefox so it doesn’t affect me anyway.

Step 6. Click install to begin the file copying

Step 7. The installation begins

Step 8. The installation is done

Step 9. Reboot

Installation complete. Now you can go back to VMware’s site and grab a few premade images to load up in the player. Part 2 of this step by step guide will layout loading up images from VMware. Part 3 will be how to create your own images, from blank images. The final part 4 will be about P2V, physical to virtual transition using the free converter tools available from VMware.

Here is the link to the player download: VMware player

Here is the link to the player images: VMware images

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