Virtual PC 2007 SP1

I’m not quite sure how this slipped by me but it did.  I was in the process of yet again re-paving the laptop (explanation below) and re-installing Virtual PC 2007 when I ran across a download on the MS site for "Virtual PC 2007 SP1" .   I had already installed VPC 2007 (x64 version) on the laptop and had installed all the patches that MS Update provides and this wasn’t one that was included in the mix.  Just to be sure that something was indeed changing, I did screenshots of the "About" panels and sure enough, the versions did indeed change after installing SP1.

A pop-up came up during the install saying that Windows Explorer (and a PID) was in use and that it needed to be shut down.  Nothing was running, and I had been running VPC 2007 to do the screenshots, so I rebooted to make sure nothing was left running just in case.  I tried doing the install once again after the reboot and the same message popped up.  This time I chose "ignore" and pushed through the install, which seems to have completed successfully.  I brought up an old XP Pro SP2 VPC and all seems to be running fine.

From the download site, support has been added for the following:

Additonal Guest Operating System support:
Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Server® 2008 Standard
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3

Additional Host Operating System support:
Windows Vista® Ultimate Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Business Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows Vista® Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3

Why was I re-paving the laptop again?  Why aren’t you running Server 2008 on the laptop anymore you may ask?  Frankly, slower than expected boot times (I was running Hyper-V pre-release under the covers) and the lack off NAT’ing capability under Hyper-V – coupled with the issues I was running into with installing the Live Writer, Mail, etc… apps (I know, I know, there’s a kludgy file copy workaround from a Vista x64 installation of them) was just going to put too much of a crimp in my offsite productivity.  The result – I decided to re-pave and go back to Vista x64 and VPC 2007 for testing and development.  What can I say…not enough hours in the day for some of this stuff…gotta get work done ;?)

Doug White