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Windows 7

Diskeeper Offers Complimentary License for XP Mode on Windows 7

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Diskeeper Corporation announced today that their End User Licence Agreement (EULA) has been updated to allow an additional complimentary license of Diskeeper 2009 for Microsoft’s elite and business customers of Windows 7’s XP mode.

The latest Microsoft operating system will use desktop virtualization in its Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions so that customers will be able to run Windows XP compatible applications on their Windows 7 machines. Windows XP mode will be delivered as a free, out-of-band update to encourage users to make the switch to Microsoft’s forthcoming operating system.

Diskeeper Corporation’s recent EULA update signifies additional help to Microsoft and hardware OEMs to support customer upgrades. In the future, Windows 7 customers will be able to purchase Diskeeper Corporation’s products together with a complimentary licence specifically for use on XP Mode only.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Coming Half July, Public Availability Of Hyper-V 2.0 Set For 22 October

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From Microsoft’s Windows Server Division Weblog:

“You may have seen some of the recent news articles that have started to roll out around the RTM and General availability dates of Windows 7.  As Windows Server 2008 R2 is a joint development effort with Windows 7 we are aligned with the same RTM and General Availability (GA) dates.

With that – Windows Server 2008 R2  RTM code is on track to be available to our partners sometime in the 2nd half of July. Windows Server 2008 R2 will also be broadly available about the same time as the Windows 7 GA date of Oct 22.

Download and start testing with the RC candidate at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver“

Via Virtualization.info

Sun’s xVM VirtualBox 2.1.2 Comes With Full Support For Windows 7 Beta

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Sun has announced the newest version of xVM VirtualBox, which got a significant update.

VirtualBox 2.1.2 is the first to fully support the beta version of Windows 7 as a guest or operating system.

  • Users can install Windows 7 Beta on the bare metal and then run Windows Vista/XP or Ubuntu or the Sun Solaris OS.
  • Users can run Windows 7 Beta on a Mac, Windows Vista/XP, etc. Linux (all 35 types) and OpenSolaris as well.
  • VirtualBox 2.1.2 also supports more than 1,000 virtual machines per host operating system.
  • Made speed improvements for real mode and protected mode without paging.
  • Raised the RAM limit for new VMs to 75% of the host memory.

And it has added or fixed a number of other items in this maintenance release.

Windows 7 Beta 1 Seems Virtualization-Ready

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From MaximumPC:

Although the official release of Beta 1 of Windows 7 isn’t expected until early January, a leaked copy of what looks like Beta 1’s been making the rounds on the Internet for a few days. ZDNet’s Ed Bott has spent some “quality time” with the build, and reports some interesting tidbits from the EULA:

  • The revision ID at the end of the EULA is: Win7_B.1_PRO_NRL_en-US – so it sure sounds like Beta 1 is on the loose.
  • There’s no limit on the number of installs you can perform, but they stop working on August 1.
  • Redmond says you can’t use Beta 1 in a production environment.
  • You can install Beta 1 in a virtual machine instead of a normal installation, but only one VM per hardware device.
  • Potential privacy concerns (such as Customer Experience Improvement Program and automatic error reporting) are turned on by default, but you can turn them off if you prefer.
  • Beta 1 must be activated.
  • Releasing benchmark test results to third parties without Microsoft’s prior written agreement is not permitted.

Native Support for Virtual Hard Disks To Be Added To Windows 7?

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A team at Microsoft is hiring developers to work on adding native support in Windows 7 for Virtual Hard Disks (VHD) – Microsoft’s semi-proprietary specification for single-file virtual machine hard disks, reports the istartedsomething blog.

The job posting reads:

Do you want to join the team that is bringing virtualization into the mainstream? In Windows 7, our team will be responsible for creating, mounting, performing I/O on, and dismounting VHDs (virtual hard disks) natively. Imagine being able to mount a VHD on any Windows machine, do some offline servicing and then boot from that same VHD. Or perhaps, taking an existing VHD you currently use within Virtual Server and boost performance by booting natively from it.

Do you want to have the opportunity to work on a great Core OS team at the heart of Windows? If you have big ideas and want to implement them, if you love writing code, if you love delving into operating system internals, if you want to work on high visibility projects with direct consumer and customer impact and still work in a very technical environment, then you will feel right at home in this team.

Virtualization technology has been a great success with Virtual Server and Hyper-V. With native OS support on the horizon it will become an even greater hit. Our team is making this a reality in Windows 7. Consider the simplicity of backup using a VHD, or the portability of a virtual disk backed by a single file. These are a few reasons why this technology is poised to be one of the greatest features in Windows 7–come help us achieve this goal.

Now, the question is, will Microsoft allow booting from virtual hard disks?

Please comment with your opinion!