MS, Intel "Goofed Up" Win 7 XP Virtualization 315
clang_jangle writes "Ars Technica has a short article up describing how Microsoft and Intel have 'goofed up' Windows 7's XP Mode by ensuring many PCs will not be able to use it. (And it won't be easy to figure out in advance if your PC is one of them.) Meanwhile, over at Infoworld, Redmond is criticized for having the 'right idea, wrong technology' with their latest compatibility scheme, and PC World says 'great idea, on paper.' With Windows 7 due to be released in 2010, and Redmond apparently eager to move on from XP, perhaps this is not really a 'goof' at all?"
...easy to figure out if your PC can use it (Score:1, Informative)
1Ghz processor, 1.25GB of RAM, and 15GB of disk space per Windows virtualization?
Then run this standalone app:
http://www.grc.com/securable.htm
That was easy.
Re:2010? (Score:2, Informative)
Based on the 3 year rule, most people say 2010.
All the postings from Microsoft developers, combined with their probably-intentional leaks are hinting strongly at a late-fall release.
Re:Difficult? (Score:3, Informative)
Previous virtualization systems did not require processor virtualization extensions to function.
They're calling it a "goof" because it would have made more sense *not* to require the extensions and use them only on an as-present basis to enhance performance. This is especially appropriate given that that many of Intel's offerings are lacking VT, and Virtual PC 2007 (the foundation for XPM) does not require extensions, but can use them if they are present.
I imagine that the reason Microsoft requires them is that they wanted to have an excellent baseline for performance of XPM on all machines. They made the mistake of assuming that many/most machines have virtualization extensions, when the article states that that is not the case.
Re:I hate to ask the obvious (Score:5, Informative)
The solution Microsoft is adding to Windows 7 is the same solution Apple used for the OS 9 - X transition. Classic was a second operating system that ran essentially as a virtual machine.
How to figure it out (Score:5, Informative)
When running Linux, open up a terminal and run this: /proc/cpuinfo | grep -q svm || cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -q vmx`; then echo Yes; else echo No; fi
echo -n "Does my cpu support virtualizaiton? "; if `cat
Another issue you may have is if your system has the virtualization functions disabled in BIOS. Some laptops do this, and have no way to turn them on. My Dell D820 works fine.
Re:Why ARE there new Intel CPUs without VT-x? (Score:2, Informative)
Only the low-end CPUs don't have them.
So if you bought a machine aimed at corporations, it will have the VT extensions. For example, all current ThinkPad R series and Tseries have them, and all Lenovo M series and ThinkStation products also have them.
All bets are off if you bought one of those shitty 699$ 17" laptops with horrible screen resolution ;)
XP Mode can't play games, it's a lot of work to maintain (seperate domain account, seperate users, seperate AV, seperative firewall). It's aimed at small businesses - not at home users (they don't need it), and not at big corporate environments (There's MED-V for them).
Re:Hardware Virtualization needed. (Score:4, Informative)
Also, with Intel, it's not enough that the CPU and chipset supports VT-x, it also has to be enabled in the BIOS. Some manufacturers disable it, and some (most notably Sony) often won't even show the option in the BIOS set-up, making it permanently turned off. All to save a few bucks in support costs.
Re:Difficult? (Score:2, Informative)
And yet it still requires users who have perfectly serviceable hardware running XP to upgrade to new hardware to run Win7 + XP
Ok, you're confused in a few ways.
The XP feature is intended for business users only. Not home users. If a business has "perfectly serviceable hardware running XP", they're not going to upgrade the OS.
and if you buy new hardware, well, you'll probably have Win7, and corporate users are just going to upgrade and leave XP.
Yes... and now that they can use Windows 7 to run their ancient XP-only applications, they'll be happy with their Windows 7 purchase and not bother to downgrade back to XP.
That's the *entire point* of it-- currently a lot of corporate users *can't* upgrade and leave XP because they have applications that only run on XP. This virtualization environment will allow them to move to Windows 7 without leaving those applications behind.
Really, what's the point again -- I need to buy new hardware to continue to use XP?
Assuming you mean "I, personally", then no. This feature is not intended for you. If you buy new hardware you'll get a copy of Windows 7 without the XP virtualization ability.
Maybe I'm confused about your entire post.
Off-topic, but I'd love to see the rationale from whoever moderated my first post in this thread "Redundant." Redundant with what?
Re:How to figure it out (Score:3, Informative)
This is even easier:
Re:Ask Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
But, if you're going 64bit linux and plan to keep this one as long as you've kept your last one, maybe 8GB is the way to go.... I am running 64bit linux with XP, Vista, and win7 in VMware right now, and it's just fiiiiiiiiine......
Re:I've tried it (Score:5, Informative)
The parent isn't insightful, because he erroneously believes that a new machine guarantees that virtualization will be available. Not so.
Buy a $3000 Sony Vaio-Z, for example, and despite it having a chipset and a brand spanking new Core 2 Duo CPU that both supports VT-x, the manufacturer has chosen not to give the users the ability to turn it on in the BIOS, so it doesn't help one bit.
Re:A minor update (Score:5, Informative)
That suite of applications that you're testing doesn't accurately represent the target population for XP emulation.
XP Emulation is primarily geared towards businesses with legacy/custom business applications which have not been re-written for Windows Vista/7.
We run an ancient version of Televantage here.
The Televantage server itself is still running NT4. The client software refuses to run on anything newer than Windows XP SP1.
The solution has been to go ahead and update our machines to SP2/SP3/Vista/whatever and run Televantage inside a small virtual machine running Windows 2000 SP4 - it works great.
This is the kind of problem the XP-mode is intended to address.
Re:How to figure it out (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hardware Virtualization needed. (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed they don't. Apart from the BZ-series, all Sony Vaio PCs have VT-x disabled, and no way to turn it on in the BIOS setup. Even if you buy a brand new Core 2 Duo P9600 Vaio Z with 4 GB RAM for 2-3000 bucks, it won't be an option.
Re:How to figure it out (Score:5, Informative)
No Virtualization on some new Intel (Score:5, Informative)
AC obviously didn't read the article, which states clearly that Intel uses VT availbility as a market segregation tool.
A recent example would be the new Core 2 Quad Q8400, now with less VT! [anandtech.com]
Re:Ask Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
And they would be wrong. Disk caching in memory has a significant impact on performance. If you are utilizing a significant percentage of your memory then there will be little caching.
I have experienced this myself on a system with 2GB of ram. While running a single VM utilizing 1.1 GB of memory the system was responsive and snappy. Running two VMs using 1.8 GB of memory the system would crawl to a stop waiting for disk operations to complete.
Re:2010? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Difficult? (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, yes they kind of did. Before VT extensions the guest OS needed to be aware of the fact that it was not running on bare metal.
No it didn't. In fact, that was one of the primary benefits of Vmware over Xen for a long time -- that the guest did NOT need to know that.
Various hacks by VMWare and Xen (NT kernel hacks, funny drivers, etc)
Vmware didn't require NT kernel hacks or funny drivers at all. They provided some for the video and mouse, but they were only to (in the case of video) improve performance and (in the case of the mouse) increase functionality a tiny bit, and weren't strictly required. In fact, the only way to install them was once the guest was already up and running.
Virtual PC -- a Microsoft product (at least after they bought it) -- also supported running unmodified guests.
(I can't speak to anything Xen did.)
Re:Hardware Virtualization needed. (Score:4, Informative)
I would say that the single biggest reason that Windows is as prevalent as it is today is that to a very large extent, MS has maintained backwards compatibility at almost any cost.
I have one pgm from OS X 10.0 that no longer worked at some point (10.2? Not sure.) It was freeware. I had to update OroborOSX a few times with my OS X update. I have a platform running Tiger (10.4 - current rev now is 10.5, Leopard) - and it is running my Microsoft Office X that I bought when that was a 10.1 machine. At some point, IE wouldn't run and MS said they would no longer support it under OS X (I'm just rounding out the list - I could care less if that was Apple's or MS's doing.)
None of my user files are affected by upgrades.
Like you, I can point to a few - very few - examples of OS X not bending over for backwards compatibility.
I can't say what backwards compatibility OS X has with OS 9 and prior (supported via Classic mode for a while on OS X) - other than to say - pretty much none.
By the time OS X came out, Apple had lost all sorts of market share - are you suggesting that that was because they weren't providing backwards compatibilities?
I just cannot believe that a large extent of the reason for MS's market share is their over-the-years backwards compatibility.
You are correct in that they did have that, and I've seen Win users over the years tout it as important, and then brag to me that OS X didn't have that (info source: see flying monkeys). Then those same users would get slammed when technology moved on and not complain, because whatever it was had a good run before being obsolesced.
My take on it is much simpler: MS saved money over the years by not upgrading fundamental parts of their OS until/unless absolutely forced to do so (see: Win32) or sometimes never. Now, their own technical inertia may kill them.
OS X is gaining market share. I'd like to believe that Linux is as well, but I don't know (maybe it's dropping). But quite simply, that has nothing to do with backwards compatibility.
Re:Hardware Virtualization needed. (Score:1, Informative)
You can enable VT and AHCI on a Napa/Santa Rosa platform Phoenix BIOS Vaio laptop.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=189228
The trick is simple and effective, it consists of using a utility to dump the nvram contents, edit a value at a certain offset from 0 to 1 and update the nvram.Do laptops use a CMOS chip or they use flashrom? if the former you would lose the changes once you ran out of battery
Re:Ask Slashdot (Score:2, Informative)
You'll need a 64-bit OS to see the extra RAM in your virtual hosts. (I think. As stated, you can run a 64-bit guest on a 32-bit host if you have hardware virtualization acceleration, but I assume you still need a 64-bit OS to have the guests see all the RAM.)
Not quite. You need a 64-bit kernel to use RAM above 4Gb (sometimes above 3.25Gb - it depends on your hardware and OS). Though in Windows this does mean you need a complete 64-bit system, with Linux you can run a 32-bit userspace on a 64-bit kernel. No individual process (so no individual virtual machine in most cases
will be able to use more then 3Gb but over-all you can use the lot (and any not used the host OS will use for cache/buffers as needed).
I run my home server this way, as when I built it the CPU was not 64-bit. A Motherboard+CPU+RAM upgrade later I had 64-bitness and 4Gb RAM of which 3.5Gb was seen - so I moved to a 64-bit kernel to use the other 0.5 (as easy as "aptitude install [name-of-64-bit-kernel-image-package]" under Debian/Etch) but didn't fancy messing around converting my userland setup.
When I next upgrade the OS (to Debian/Lenny, in the next few months) I'm going to do a fresh install full 64-bit, but until then the this arrangement seems to work just fine. The machine now has 6Gb RAM (a recent upgrade as things were getting crowded at times and RAM is cheap), shared between the host and a couple of permanent VMs (currently 32-bit) and occasionally some small other VMs (also 32-bit).
Though to be honest, if you are installing Linux as your base OS, there is no reason to hold yourself at 32-bit - I am only still there due to the history of the rig.
Re:Hardware Virtualization needed. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hardware Virtualization needed. (Score:1, Informative)
x64-based Windows drops support for 16-bit programs (but this is largely the fault of AMD/Intel rather than MS, who would have had to work around processor limitations since 16-bit instructions aren't available in 64-bit mode).
Not entirely true... virtual real-mode (v8086 mode, DOS) doesn't work in 64-bit mode, but 16-bit protected mode (Windows 3.x) is still available