XP on Bootcamp & VMWare Fusion, take 2
Time to re-install XP
My setup until yesterday was Bootcamp partion that was running as a VM using VMWare Fusion. The Bootcamp partition was set up as FAT32, because I NTFS came up as readonly when mounted under Mac OS.
Then I started up another VM (Fedora Core 7, although i have since noticed it's not what OS you run, but just a second VM). Maybe it's not enough memory, maybe it's a VM running from bootcamp plus a VM running from a disk image, but while it had worked previously, this time, it locked up my Mac hard. I finally had to hard boot the Mac. When I got back into th VM, I noticed things were broken. Now, I've had to hard boot XP many times and I've never seen this. An indeterminate number of files were corrupted. I noticed one XML file that halfway through turned into binary garbage, so I assume that the other systems failing were suffering from similar corruption. Basically it was hosed, because there was no way to determine what had been corrupted. Time to re-install.
Bootcamp & VMware install
Looking at my post from last time, it was clearly written with the frazzled recollection of a day of trying to make things work, since i once again ran into problems. This time I'm making sure I write the resolution down.
- Imaged the old partition, because you always realize that you forgot to back up some vital file.
- Removed the old partition and created a new one (using the Bootcamp tool), this time large enough for more than just fallback use (since it's used daily under VMWare). This creates a FAT32 partition.
- Inserted my install disk and Bootcamp restarted to fire up the windows install. Important note here, this has to be a real XP install disk. I first tried to use my MSDN DVD with the chooser for picking what OS to install. However, the Mac keyboard doesn't seem to work when you get to the menu. So I used an XP Pro w/ SP2 CD and rebooted. Now the installer ran just fine
- Formatted the partition using NTFS. Even if you use FAT32, re-format, don't use the Bootcamp formatted partition. At least for me, using that prepared partition didn't work and created an unbootable image. I know NTFS cannot be written to by MacOS, but it doesn't really matter, since once I boot it as a VM, i can always transfer files via loopback file sharing. I'm going NTFS to get a journaling file system. Theoretically that should prevent the corruption I got last time.
- After the install completes, pop in the Mac OS disk and let it install the Bootcamp utilities. This gives you full support for the Macbook Pro hardware.
- Activate Windows and reboot into Mac OS X.
- Fire up VMWare Fusion. Bootcamp partition should be listed as a VM. Since I previously had a bootcamp partition, I had to go into Library::VMWare Fusion::Application Support::Virtual Machines and remove the old Bootcamp partition folder. Fusion will then do its magic and prep the Bootcamp partition to run as a VMWare Image.
- Activate Windows again. That should be the last time you have to do it.
Let's hope this doesn't turn into a bi-monthly process :)
Labels: activation, boot camp, vmware fusion
Software Activation vs. Virtualization, Part 3
Part of an
ongoing saga.
Rebooted back into VMWare Fusion and yeah, Illustrator Activation was indeed screwed there as well. Office 2007 too, but at least it just let's me reactivate (no doubt noting me as a repeat offender somewhere). So I called Adobe and was told that "it's a sensitive piece of software". No it's not. Illustrator can take any beating you give it.. It's the "anti-piracy" crap that's sensitive. I got an "emergency activation code" to get it going again and was advised to Deactivate before i switch VM setups and then re-activate after the reboot. OMFG. Seriously, just give me USB dongle if you are so sensitive about it. That would be inifintely more convenient.
Dug around the net a bit and it seems that if i fake my mac address to be the same between boot camp and the VM boot, it'll not invalidate my activation. Might try that next. Of course, the same board i found that on also noted that if I just got a crack for my legally purchased product, all troubles would be gone as well. Yes, once again, anti-piracy crap is not stopping pirates but legitimate customers. You'd figure someone might have spotted the pattern here, but may those DRM-colored glasses filter reality a bit too well.
Labels: activation, boot camp, vmware fusion
Software Activation vs. Virtualization (and multiple PC ownership)
Just as Virtualization is finally becoming a useful technology, everybody and their uncle has decided that software activation is the new hot way to stop theft. Of course, like all anti-piracy tools, the paying customers get screwed, because the pirates have already patched their copies to not require activation. Bravo! You know i'd prefer friggin USB dongles to this big brother activation business.
I've talked about these problems before, but I've got more fun with the VM vs. bootcamp image activation troubles. I just got Adobe CS3 and for a programmer with occasional Photoshop/Illustrator needs, that's a pretty serious expense. I mean it costs me more than MSDN and gets used a fraction of the time. But I need it. And forget that I have three different computers I use at different times and I really ought to be able to install my purchased software on all of these machines, since I, the owner of the license, will never be using two computers at once. But that's a whole other story.
Back to the re-activation on hardware change business... I've been running Windows under VMware for the last couple of weeks, but for the Illustrator work I need to do right now, it was a bit sluggish. No problem, reboot into Bootcamp! Mind you, this isn't a differnt install of Windows. This is the same physical disk partition, but booted natively vs. via VMware. What happens? Illustrator bitches about activation, as does office, because it saw the hardware change. Let me guess, when i reboot in the virtual machine it'll bitch yet again. Sooner or later it'll just shut me down as a serial offender. Thanks! Way to reward my purchase.
Labels: activation, boot camp, vmware fusion
My new Visual Studio Dev workhorse: Macbook Pro
I'm just starting some new contract work that requires a bit more on-site than usual and instead of syncing up my various dev environments all the time, I decided that it's time for a new laptop. My current laptop is a 15" Powerbook G4. It's been a great machine, but for the past couple of years it's mostly been an expensive Email/Browser appliance with the occasional Eclipse/Java diversion.
This time I needed something to let me do VS.NET development and all the other MS related things that come across my path. Now, obviously my previous laptop choice shows i'm not impartial, but I certainly wasn't going to settle for less that what I had. I went through this last time as well and the conclusion is not only the same, but decidedly more in favor of a Macbook this time around.
Go ahead, try it.. Find a laptop like this: slim profile, powerful CPU, large widescreen LCD, light and sturdy. By the time you find the PC equivalents, you don't get to be cheaper. And for some reason, PCs still come mostly in two flavors: 1) light and small screen or low power and 2) giant hulking powerhouses that are not that much more convenient than the original PC Portable's. Add to that, that I have yet to find another laptop that comes with a sturdy shell like the Macs -- If you look at some of the dents my old Powerbook has sustained, then you'd realize that I would have cracked open any plastic shelled laptop a long time ago.
Ok, enough with the rationalization already, buy your Mac, be a fanboy. Don't come whining when it can't cut it as your dev machine...
I have to admit that the last 3 days have included more reboots than I'd care to admit, but I finally have everything configured just right and I don't mind saying that this rig is freakin' sweet!
The setup is as follows: 15" 2.4GHz Core Duo Macbook Pro w/ 2GB RAM & 160MB HD. 140GB Leopard partition. 20GB bootcamp partition (short-sighted mistake on sizing) with Win XP Pro, Visual Studio Orcas, etc. Vmware Fusion 1.1 Beta running boot camp partition as VPC image under Leopard.
So what pitfalls have I come across?
Bootcamp was a pain to get going
Vmware fusion was just about the most painless windows install I've ever done. It asked me for the key before it started and took care of everything until it booted into XP. Bravo!
Boot camp on the other hand complained about my disk being corrupt (Brand new mac, mind you). Rebooted from CD, ran disk repair, was told there was nothing to repair. Tried boot camp again. Success! Started XP install on the formatted partition that boot camp set up. Got to the reboot early in the install, Mac rebooted, complained it couldn't boot from CD and the HD had errors, please press any key, but no keys produced results. Hard rebooted, ejected CD, tried to restart install via bootcamp, but same problem. Removed bootcamp partition, started over, this time manually formatting the disk during install to be sure. Some more issues aside, finally boot camp installed. Only then do I find out that VMware Fusion can use the boot camp partition as a virtual image. Now that's useful. Except I had sized it as the emergency fall back windows install. Doh.. Well, I'll just mount the Mac disk on the windows side for storage. Then all my files are inside the FileVault as well.
XP Activation with bootcamp/vmware fusion
After finding out I could use a single install as a full native and a virtual instance, I was thrilled and started up the bootcamp partition. VMware had to tweak it some, but it came up. XP Activation got invalidated because I apparently changed the hardware too much. Same happened when I rebooted into XP directly. Now it seems ok, but Redmond has received about 4 activations from the same XP install in 2 days. No, I'm not frantically installing on all my friend's PCs, I'm just trying to get one install stable.
Vmware Fusion Unity and Leopard Spaces have some issues
Now, I have no right to expect something as funky as Unity to work with an OS feaure that was released 4 days ago, so I'm not really bitching, just warning. For me using Unity and Spaces caused spaces to switch back and forth automatically at about twice a second several times when I had two Win windows in different spaces. And my Mac apps all lost their windows. So for now, XP runs fullscreen in its own Space and it's all wonderfully stable.
WPF likes hardware acceleration
So in the middle of the night I wake up in a panic. Everything was working so wonderfully, but had I missed something? Well, I kept saying
"i don't care that virtualization doesn't support the GPU, i'm not planning to play games on this machine". Hahaha.. But what about WPF? It uses the GPU to render all that fancy vector goodness! Did I just buy another email appliance? I fired up some WPF samples and it worked fine. As they got fancier, things got a bit choppier and the 3D was a slideshow. But work, it did. So, WPF gracefully falls back to software only mode. I rebooted into native XP and WPF was running in all its glory. Yay, all is good.
Ok, this is day 3 with my new rig and I'm very happy on both the Mac and Windows side. I even have a single dev machine that can test all browsers currently supported by Silverlight. And once Moonlight drops, I'll just fire up a VM of Fedora and cover that use case as well. Let's see if the euphoria lasts.
Labels: boot camp, macbook, vmware fusion, VS.NET
