Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   [http://dev.modern.ie/tools/vms/windows/]

   Chris & I have talked about VMs in the past... You install the VM Host software, then add VMs to it. A VM is a copy of Windows installed to a Virtual Hard Disk [VHD], which is a single file that your installed copy of Windows treats as if it was a real, physical hard drive. The VM Host software pretends to be a PC, emulating the PC's hardware in software. The end effect is that you have a copy of Windows [or another OS like Linux] running in a window or full screen.

   Normally you set up a VM by creating a new VM in the host software, then installing Windows the same way you would to your PC or laptop. The Microsoft VMs are a larger download, but take all the work out of it. You don't have to worry about any settings, nor do you have to install Windows in the new VM -- with VirtualBox host software installed, you un-zip the download, them import the .ova file you get, wait a couple of minutes for the process to complete, & you're done.

   Microsoft's VMs are 90 day trials -- they tell you several times [even on the initial desktop wallpaper] to create a snapshot or save your original download, so that after the 90 day expiration you can start over.

   Besides being a great test environment, where your regular copy of Windows remains untouched, a VM lets you do stuff like run software that won't run on your version of Windows, or run software like some games in a window where otherwise you could not. It's also a fairly painless way to get a look at Windows 10.

   Myself, I copy the virtual hard disk where a VM's installed somewhere else as a backup. If I check out an app that messes up Windows, or if I've installed several & want to go back to before I installed them, I copy that copy over the original, replacing it, & I'm back where I started.

   Today when I checked, VMs were available from XP through 10. The 10 download was ~5GB, & the same for the unzipped .ova file -- importing that into V/Box created a virtual hard disk that was ~10GB.

   Posted 9 years ago #
2. 

   krypteller
   Member

   If tou have a legal W8/W8.1 license you are entitled to a completely free virtual XP Pro with SP 3. Just google a bit to get the file from

   http://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=8002

   and download WindowsXPMode_en-us.exe
   it is 469.8 MB

   It runs fine under VirtualBox on my 8.1 Home laptop. I use it daily to test the giveaway of the day.

   Posted 9 years ago #
3. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   The new insider build released yesterday uses a new way to manage RAM. I upgraded one of my VMs so I can see if it makes a difference -- it sounds cool anyway. :)

   In Windows 10, we have added a new concept in the Memory Manager called a compression store, which is an in-memory collection of compressed pages. This means that when Memory Manager feels memory pressure, it will compress unused pages instead of writing them to disk. This reduces the amount of memory used per process, allowing Windows 10 to maintain more applications in physical memory at a time. This also helps provide better responsiveness across Windows 10. The compression store lives in the System process’s working set. Since the system process holds the store in memory, its working set grows larger exactly when memory is being made available for other processes. This is visible in Task Manager and the reason the System process appears to be consuming more memory than previous releases.

   Posted 9 years ago #
4. 

   krypteller
   Member

   Indeed cool, not hot ;)
   I suppose CPU cycles will be used to compress and decompress. That should take less time than write and read the HD. If you have an SSD, you profit less then when you have a slow mechanical drive. If the idea works, perhaps the chip builder will build a hardware compression/decompression unit. Just like we now have a FPU = floating point unit.

   Posted 9 years ago #

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