Alexander’s Blog

For those of you who are using Windows 7, you may have notice that it’s a vast improvement over Windows Vista. I wholeheartedly recommend Windows 7 to my clients and students and just about everyone who uses Windows. Microsoft should be commended for doing a great job with Windows 7. People are often quick to criticize Microsoft when they see a lack of quality or security in Microsoft’s products so I believe people should also be quick to praise Microsoft when they do a good job.

Overall, I am very impressed with Windows 7 operating system (OS). I can go on with all the great things in Windows 7 but in this post I am going to focus on what I believe is missing in Windows 7. Here’s a short list.

Copying CD/DVD
Windows 7 does not allow you to make a copy of your CDs or DVDs. You can burn (i.e. copy) music, pictures and videos to a DVD but you cannot make a copy of your own data, pictures or video CDs/DVDs. Your option: Use a third-party tool.

Newsreader
Unlike Windows XP, Microsoft no longer provides a newsreader in its new operating systems. Your option: Use a third-party tool, like Mozilla’s Thunderbird.

Sound Recorder
Technically, Sound Recorder is not missing but Microsoft has significantly downgraded the Sound Recorder utility in Windows 7. Unlike Windows XP, which contains a fully-functional Sound Recorder utility that lets you edit, mix files, and includes several special effects, the Windows 7 Sound Recorder utility looks like it was created by a 5 year-old during his lunch break at the daycare. The only thing you can do is record the sound and save the file. That’s about it. People are still trying to figure out Microsoft’s logic behind their decision. They couldn’t enhance the Sound Recorder tool so they decided they will make it worse than before and offer a stripped-down version instead. Why? No one knows. If it wasn’t important then why not remove it from the OS all together? Your option: Use a third-party tool.

Support for Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
Unlike Windows XP, Microsoft does not offer support for Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 in Windows 7. This raises numerous virtualization issues, some of which I have documented in this blog.

By not providing support for Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and to make things even worse…..not offering support for running x64 guest operating systems in Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005, Microsoft is encouraging Windows 7 users to look for alternate solutions, such as VMware Server. I am hoping Microsoft will revise this bad marketing decision because these days 64-bit hardware and software is very common and Microsoft really needs to rethink it’s strategy. Your option: Use a third-party tool.

Anti-Virus Software
Windows 7 doesn’t include any anti-virus software. You can, however, install Microsoft Security Essentials, which is free and protects your PC against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software, Your option: Either use a third-party tool such as AVGFree, or install Microsoft Security Essentials.

Comments:
In the past joining Microsoft SpyNet was optional (e.g. in Windows Defender) but with Microsoft Security Essentials you are only given two choices.

Choice #1: You must agree to have information automatically collected and sent to Microsoft, including your personal information.
Choice #2: You must agree to have information automatically collected and sent to Microsoft, including your personal information.

That’s right. Those are the only two choices. You can either send “some” information to Microsoft or you can send “a lot” of information to Microsoft. So what’s your pleasure?

Basic Membership: You agree to send some information to Microsoft.
Advanced Membership: You agree to send a lot of information to Microsoft.

In either case Microsoft warns you that you might be risking your privacy because your personal information might be unintentionally sent to Microsoft. Do you have the option to not send personal information to Microsoft? Absolutely not! If you want to use Microsoft Security Essentials you have no choice but to agree to risk your privacy.

Recovery Console

The Recovery Console in earlier versions of Windows is no longer available in Windows 7. Recovery Console was awesome because it easily allowed you to managed services and drivers by enabling or disabling them. It also allowed you to fix the boot sector and master boot record, etc. Starting with Windows Vista, the Recovery Console has been replaced by several tools that are located in the System Recovery Options menu. What this means is that you now have to go through a bunch of steps and recovery of the system is not as simple in some cases as it used to be in the previous versions.

Conclusion
I may update this post and add more items to the list of things that are missing in Windows 7 in the future as I discover them. The purpose of this post is to let Microsoft know what’s missing in Windows 7 so they can hopefully add these components either with optional Windows Updates, service packs or in the next OS. I think it would be great if Microsoft could provide some explanation to the consumers when they leave things out of the OS. Frankly, there might be some very good explanations or reasoning behind the decisions but if the consumers don’t know then it causes confusion. For instance, to avoid confusion, Microsoft could say we couldn’t get a 64-bit version of the newsreader in time so we left it out of the OS and will add it at a later date.

I believe most people will be able to live with some of what’s missing in Windows 7 but the lack of support for 64-bit virtualization and the inability to duplicate CDs/DVDs are something that deserves a lot of press……along with all the cool stuff included in Windows 7.

So you think Windows 7 is cool and is so much better than Vista. Well, it is. But did you know you can do some cool magic tricks…..well, sort of……in Windows 7? Try this.

1. Start, Run, C: and press ENTER

2. Create a new folder in the root of drive C

3. Rename the folder to UFO.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

4. Open the folder and see all the things Windows 7 can do for you.

Cheers!

NOTE: You don’t have to type UFO, you can type anything you want before the period. The result will be the same.

Here’s a video that walks you through the steps necessary to clone a VMware Server image on Windows 7. I used Windows 7 as my host computer for this video but you can use any other operating system and follow the same procedure for cloning a virtual image. VMware makes cloning images a breeze and because the FREE VMware Server uses a Web interface you will love the ease and efficiency of VMware server.

You might also be interested in this video: How to Install VMware Server on Windows 7

End users are so glad to see Windows 7 released, an operating system that works so much better than Windows Vista. The developers, system administrators,  and Microsoft Certified Trainers are not too happy to find out that Microsoft doesn’t support Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 in Windows 7 and even though there are ways to install it (see my blog post “How to Install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7″), you cannot install a 64-bit guest operating system in Virtual PC 2007.  Yes, although Virtual PC 2007 can be installed on a 64-bit host operating system, you cannot run any 64-bit guest operating system in Virtual PC 2007.

Unfortunately, SharePoint Server 2010 can only be installed on a 64-bit computer. Which means, if you are a developer, trainer, or a tester interested in testing SharePoint Server 2010 in a Virtual Machine, you can’t, You have to go buy a 64-bit computer just to test SharePoint Server 2010, or look for non-Microsoft solutions. For some people it may not be a big deal to look for non-Microsoft solutions but for people like me who teach, consult, support, test, and write about Microsoft technologies and products, it sure makes our jobs difficult.

Luckily, CodeProject has an interesting solution that allows running SharePoint 2010 on a Windows 7 x64 computer simply by modifying the config.xml file located at C:\Program Files (x86)\MSECache\oserver2010. Here’s how.

- Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\MSECache\oserver2010
- Go to the Files folder
- Go to the Setup folder
- Open config.xml
- Add the following line before the closing </configuration> tag

<Setting Id=”AllowWindowsClientInstall” Value=”True”/>

Click here to read the details on CodeProject’s Web site. Before you get started, I encourage you to read this post from MCT Michael Pisarek who explains the steps and gives you some nice tips.

If you are new to Windows 7 then first of all I want to make sure that you understand the different versions of virtual PCs offered by Microsoft. Before Windows 7 Microsoft offered Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. Once Windows 7 was released, Microsoft offered Windows Virtual PC, which along with Windows XP Mode, allows you to run older applications that ran on Windows XP in Windows 7. Windows Virtual PC is a special version of Virtual PC specifically designed for Windows 7. One of the major difference between the two versions is that Windows Virtual PC requires that your computer support hardware virtualization. Microsoft Virtual PC does not have that requirement. It can run on computers that do not support hardware virtualization.

Now what happens when you install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 (yes, I said “Microsoft Virtual PC 2007″, not “Windows Virtual PC”) on a Windows 7 computer? Well, you can’t. Bummer!  You can either install one or the other, but not both on the same computer. And before you even ask, no you can’t install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 in a virtual machine inside Windows XP Mode because you can’t run Virtual PC inside a Virtual PC.

So how do you run Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7? In order to install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7 you need to make sure that you first remove Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode or else you will get the following message.

If you have removed Windows XP Mode and are still getting this error then you need to make sure that Windows Virtual PC has also been removed in Control Panel, Uninstall a Program. If you do not see Windows Virtual PC listed, click on the link in the upper left-hand corner “View installed updates.” You will see Windows Virtual PC (KB958559) listed in the Microsoft Windows section, as shown below.

Right-click and uninstall the update then restart the computer. Now you should be able to install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. Of course, if you never installed Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode in the first place then you should have no problem installing Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, even though it is not supported on Windows 7. Yes, you heard it right. Microsoft does not officially support Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7.

Troubleshooting Tips

Here are some of the techniques you can try to troubleshoot the installation of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7.

#1. Make sure that you have removed Windows XP Mode from the Control Panel, Uninstall a Program.

#2. Make sure that you remove Windows Virtual PC (KB958559) by going to “View installed updates” as described above.

#3. Make sure that you have rebooted your computer after removing Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode.

#4. Try and run Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 in compatibility mode by right-clicking the setup.exe and selecting a compatible OS on the Compatibility tab, as shown below. I tried it but the Compatibility Mode did not work for me. However, I know that others have been able to make this work.

#5. Some people have reported that they have been running Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7 for a while until one of Microsoft’s update caused it to start displaying the Microsoft Compatibility Assistant message that you see above. If that is the case then you’ll have to uninstall the update, which may not be advisable, or just wait until Microsoft finally realizes that support for virtualization in Windows 7 is important. I mean true virtualization, I don’t consider support for only Windows XP Mode in Windows 7 true virtualization.

#6. It may not be enough just to use the “Turn Windows features on or off” link and uncheck Windows Virtual PC. You should completely remove Windows Virtual PC by uninstalling it, as I have mentioned earlier in this article.

#7. I tried everything listed in this article and was still getting the dreaded compatibility assistant warning until I decided to try one final troubleshooting technique. I disabled hardware virtualization in my BIOS and was finally able to install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 successfully.

#8. After you install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 successfully, one problem that you may encounter is that the NIC in Virtual PC 2007 will no longer be available (even though it is available on the host computer). This is a problem that I encountered on my Windows 7 Ultimate x64 running on an AMD 64-bit computer. When I started Virtual PC 2007 I received this warning:

“Virtual PC could not open the Virtual Machine Network Services driver. Access to the virtual network and host will be unavailable to all virtual machines using virtual networking. To fix this problem re-enable the Virtual Machine Network Services driver on one or more ethernet adapters or reinstall Virtual PC.”

Here’s what I did. I opened Network and Sharing Center, clicked Local Area Connection, clicked Properties, and checked the box Virtual Machine Network Services. That didn’t solve the problem so I uninstalled and reinstalled Virtual Machine Network Services. After you reinstall you need to go back and check the box for Virtual Machine Network Services as it doesn’t enable it automatically…….DO NOT forget this step. As soon as I checked the box and restarted Virtual PC 2007 I was able to see the NIC in Virtual PC 2007 images.

COMMENTS: All of us MCTs around the world have to use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 (or Virtual Server 2005) because most, if not all, Microsoft Learning courseware uses virtual images. It’s a shame that Microsoft does not offer support for Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7. If you visit various Windows 7 forums you will discover that there a lot of disappointed people out there. Microsoft first got everybody hooked on virtualization (especially Virtual PC 2007) but then decided to pull the rug under their feet by removing support for Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 in Windows 7. As more people start to use Windows 7 and realize how Microsoft has removed virtualization support in Windows 7, the pressure will start to mount on Microsoft and I am sure they will eventually provide a solution to Windows 7 users. I am not sure what the solution will look like. Perhaps its time for Microsoft to consider purchasing VMware :).