Microsoft Virtual PC..Oh what fun it is to ride...

My current challenge is connecting to a customers Sonicwall with GVC client. I already have one connection using GVC. I have been supplied with full GVC installer and it's a couple of versions behind what I currently have installed. Rather than take a chance of corrupting my current setup I find it's time to set up a virtual machine. 

I started with MS Virtual PC and it has been a real challenge to get running. In the end the challenge was my lack of knowledge on what OS is supported in MS Virtual PC.

I downloaded MS Virtual PC and install went easy enough but from there the road became bumpy.  My PC is running Windows 7 Home Premium and I am suspicious is not playing with MS Virtual PC very well. I finally found an article listing compatibility and even though shows yes the foot note states no integration with host. The interface was choppy with video issues and response time not good.

Now my direction is changed to "How to upgrade MS Home Premium to Windows 7 Pro?". I found Windows Anytime Upgrade web page and followed my nose from there. 

My host PC upgraded flawlessly in about 15 minutes. $89.00 poorer, four hours of research and I am now running Windows 7 Pro on desktop. 

I then turned my attention to VM I set up based on Home Premium. Like a dummy I deleted the VM file when I found was not going to fully work. I found the deleted VM in recycle bin and restored with one mouse click. 

The real pain in setting up VM is all the MS updates that have to be applied. My host machine is up to date so did not need MS updates installed. The guest is a different story. I built it from my original Home Premium DVD. It took a couple of hours and several reboots before it was up to date. Honestly not sure how long since I let go by itself periodically visiting PC during the day while I did some household chores.

At this point I am not sure how Windows Anytime Upgrade will work with a VM. One of the initial options is "do you have key", yes I do and I pumped it in  and installer took off. After about 15 minutes VM rebooted and displayed "Failed to install upgrade". Bummer. 

Thought about it for a minute and stated don't you know who I am? I started the process over and this time I got ......

This is bad to the bone. I have access to host PC drives through integration feature which is now working flawlessly. So far I have installed Chrome, IBMi Access and Sonic Wall GVC. Connected to client site with no problem!

And now for my next trick....install and upgrade PTF's for V6R1 IBMi model 550 with three partitions via HMC remotely.

Have you best day!

~Richard

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go. ~William Feather