Mixing development software versions
Folks, I'm preparing for the big migration of all of my projects to VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4. I built a Win7 in WMWare with the latest software development installed so I could rebuild and test everything in parallel with my real work. Unfortunately, problems with the mouse and stalls in VM are ruining my plans. Win7 has a terribly "jittery" mouse in the VM which requires the VMWare drivers be installed to correct the problem. However, the installation of these drivers causes the VM to freeze dead randomly every 5-10 minutes. It seems to freeze when I am manipulating opening and closing tree control nodes in Windows Explorer and the VS2010 solution pane. I spent hours researching this problem and found that if I only install the mouse and video drivers then the problem only happens every 20-30 minutes. This is still unacceptable. I continue to search for a way of making the Win7 VM stable, but no luck so far. This isn't a .NET related problem, but I'd love to hear from anyone else who has suffered from this problem and solved it. My other option is to not us a VM and install VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4 and all of the supporting kits on my work machine alongside their previous versions. Cramming everything together gives me a creepy feeling. Before I consider doing this, I just wanted to ask if this is acceptable in theory and in practise. Has anyone got everything installed side-by-side and can report success or side effects. I don't want to destroy the machine I use to make a living. Greg
Re: Mixing development software versions
I've had no problems mixing different versions of Visual Studio (2008 & 2010) and the .NET Framework (2, 3 & 4) on the one machine. Can't vouch for Silverlight though/ HTH, Joe. On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Greg Keogh wrote: > Folks, I’m preparing for the big migration of all of my projects to > VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4. I built a Win7 in WMWare with the > latest software development installed so I could rebuild and test everything > in parallel with my real work. Unfortunately, problems with the mouse and > stalls in VM are ruining my plans. > > > > Win7 has a terribly “jittery” mouse in the VM which requires the VMWare > drivers be installed to correct the problem. However, the installation of > these drivers causes the VM to freeze dead randomly every 5-10 minutes. It > seems to freeze when I am manipulating opening and closing tree control > nodes in Windows Explorer and the VS2010 solution pane. I spent hours > researching this problem and found that if I only install the mouse and > video drivers then the problem only happens every 20-30 minutes. This is > still unacceptable. > > > > I continue to search for a way of making the Win7 VM stable, but no luck so > far. This isn’t a .NET related problem, but I’d love to hear from anyone > else who has suffered from this problem and solved it. > > > > My other option is to not us a VM and install VS2010, Framework 4 and > Silverlight 4 and all of the supporting kits on my work machine alongside > their previous versions. Cramming everything together gives me a creepy > feeling. Before I consider doing this, I just wanted to ask if this is > acceptable in theory and in practise. Has anyone got everything installed > side-by-side and can report success or side effects. I don’t want to > destroy the machine I use to make a living. > > > > Greg >
Re: Mixing development software versions
Greg, I haven't experienced your specifi problem since I'm still using VS2008 on XP but I do work exclusively in VMs so I tell you what little relevant iinfo I can offer. For the mouse jittering, chech the hardware acceleration options (you may have already tried this). No idea where in Win7 but in XP they are in Display Properties (properties on desktop) -> Settings -> Advanced -> Troubleshoot. For the freezing, things to consider may be: Something may be accessing the VMs files. You may have over allocated RAM to the VM. Even if the VM doesn't actually use all the RAM, just allocating too much can cause this. I've occasionally seen the interface to the VM freeze but the VM itself keeps chugging away in the background. ie, the process that lets you access the VM is seperate to the process actually running the VM. I've had workstation freeze completely so I killed it and when I ran it again, the VM was still running fine. Have you researched possible external factors in your host rather than the VM itself? David "If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... checkmate!" -Zapp Brannigan, Futurama On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 09:20, Greg Keogh wrote: > Folks, I’m preparing for the big migration of all of my projects to VS2010, > Framework 4 and Silverlight 4. I built a Win7 in WMWare with the latest > software development installed so I could rebuild and test everything in > parallel with my real work. Unfortunately, problems with the mouse and > stalls in VM are ruining my plans. > > > > Win7 has a terribly “jittery” mouse in the VM which requires the VMWare > drivers be installed to correct the problem. However, the installation of > these drivers causes the VM to freeze dead randomly every 5-10 minutes. It > seems to freeze when I am manipulating opening and closing tree control > nodes in Windows Explorer and the VS2010 solution pane. I spent hours > researching this problem and found that if I only install the mouse and > video drivers then the problem only happens every 20-30 minutes. This is > still unacceptable. > > > > I continue to search for a way of making the Win7 VM stable, but no luck so > far. This isn’t a .NET related problem, but I’d love to hear from anyone > else who has suffered from this problem and solved it. > > > > My other option is to not us a VM and install VS2010, Framework 4 and > Silverlight 4 and all of the supporting kits on my work machine alongside > their previous versions. Cramming everything together gives me a creepy > feeling. Before I consider doing this, I just wanted to ask if this is > acceptable in theory and in practise. Has anyone got everything installed > side-by-side and can report success or side effects. I don’t want to > destroy the machine I use to make a living. > > > > Greg
RE: Mixing development software versions
Hi Greg, Another thought: I have been using Sun Virtual Box (now Oracle Virtual Box) for all my development without any problems all year. All host PCs\Laptops are Win 7 64 bit. I can create 32 or 64 bit VM's. I can even create a 64 bit VM and run it inside a 32 bit host. The best part is that it's free! Regards, Michael O'Dea-Jones From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Wednesday, 4 August 2010 9:20 AM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: Mixing development software versions Folks, I'm preparing for the big migration of all of my projects to VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4. I built a Win7 in WMWare with the latest software development installed so I could rebuild and test everything in parallel with my real work. Unfortunately, problems with the mouse and stalls in VM are ruining my plans. Win7 has a terribly "jittery" mouse in the VM which requires the VMWare drivers be installed to correct the problem. However, the installation of these drivers causes the VM to freeze dead randomly every 5-10 minutes. It seems to freeze when I am manipulating opening and closing tree control nodes in Windows Explorer and the VS2010 solution pane. I spent hours researching this problem and found that if I only install the mouse and video drivers then the problem only happens every 20-30 minutes. This is still unacceptable. I continue to search for a way of making the Win7 VM stable, but no luck so far. This isn't a .NET related problem, but I'd love to hear from anyone else who has suffered from this problem and solved it. My other option is to not us a VM and install VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4 and all of the supporting kits on my work machine alongside their previous versions. Cramming everything together gives me a creepy feeling. Before I consider doing this, I just wanted to ask if this is acceptable in theory and in practise. Has anyone got everything installed side-by-side and can report success or side effects. I don't want to destroy the machine I use to make a living. Greg
RE: Mixing development software versions
Hi I have been using Oracle VirtualBox for a long time now, I am running it on a linux host machine. I have installed different versions of Windows on a virtual machine testing and development. One of them is my main development environment and I am using both VS2008 Pro and VS2010 Express. I haven't experienced any issues using VirtualBox at all. You should try out, it's available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Best of all it's free! David. From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Wednesday, 4 August 2010 7:20 AM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: Mixing development software versions Folks, I'm preparing for the big migration of all of my projects to VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4. I built a Win7 in WMWare with the latest software development installed so I could rebuild and test everything in parallel with my real work. Unfortunately, problems with the mouse and stalls in VM are ruining my plans. Win7 has a terribly "jittery" mouse in the VM which requires the VMWare drivers be installed to correct the problem. However, the installation of these drivers causes the VM to freeze dead randomly every 5-10 minutes. It seems to freeze when I am manipulating opening and closing tree control nodes in Windows Explorer and the VS2010 solution pane. I spent hours researching this problem and found that if I only install the mouse and video drivers then the problem only happens every 20-30 minutes. This is still unacceptable. I continue to search for a way of making the Win7 VM stable, but no luck so far. This isn't a .NET related problem, but I'd love to hear from anyone else who has suffered from this problem and solved it. My other option is to not us a VM and install VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4 and all of the supporting kits on my work machine alongside their previous versions. Cramming everything together gives me a creepy feeling. Before I consider doing this, I just wanted to ask if this is acceptable in theory and in practise. Has anyone got everything installed side-by-side and can report success or side effects. I don't want to destroy the machine I use to make a living. Greg __ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 5338 (20100803) __ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com
RE: Mixing development software versions
Hi Greg, Curiously, I gave up on the Win7 version of VPC and found that the previous version (Virtual PC 2007 SP1) works fine on Windows 7 in both 32 bit and 64 bit hosts. I also now dual boot with a Boot To VHD of Win2k8S so I can run Hyper-V as well. Also have VMWare workstation and very happy with it too. Regards, Greg From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Wednesday, 4 August 2010 12:20 AM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: Mixing development software versions Folks, I'm preparing for the big migration of all of my projects to VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4. I built a Win7 in WMWare with the latest software development installed so I could rebuild and test everything in parallel with my real work. Unfortunately, problems with the mouse and stalls in VM are ruining my plans. Win7 has a terribly "jittery" mouse in the VM which requires the VMWare drivers be installed to correct the problem. However, the installation of these drivers causes the VM to freeze dead randomly every 5-10 minutes. It seems to freeze when I am manipulating opening and closing tree control nodes in Windows Explorer and the VS2010 solution pane. I spent hours researching this problem and found that if I only install the mouse and video drivers then the problem only happens every 20-30 minutes. This is still unacceptable. I continue to search for a way of making the Win7 VM stable, but no luck so far. This isn't a .NET related problem, but I'd love to hear from anyone else who has suffered from this problem and solved it. My other option is to not us a VM and install VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4 and all of the supporting kits on my work machine alongside their previous versions. Cramming everything together gives me a creepy feeling. Before I consider doing this, I just wanted to ask if this is acceptable in theory and in practise. Has anyone got everything installed side-by-side and can report success or side effects. I don't want to destroy the machine I use to make a living. Greg
Re: Mixing development software versions
Greg, Ensure that you have the VMWare Tools installed in the VM Client. Grant On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Greg Keogh wrote: > Folks, I’m preparing for the big migration of all of my projects to > VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4. I built a Win7 in WMWare with the > latest software development installed so I could rebuild and test everything > in parallel with my real work. Unfortunately, problems with the mouse and > stalls in VM are ruining my plans. > > > > Win7 has a terribly “jittery” mouse in the VM which requires the VMWare > drivers be installed to correct the problem. However, the installation of > these drivers causes the VM to freeze dead randomly every 5-10 minutes. It > seems to freeze when I am manipulating opening and closing tree control > nodes in Windows Explorer and the VS2010 solution pane. I spent hours > researching this problem and found that if I only install the mouse and > video drivers then the problem only happens every 20-30 minutes. This is > still unacceptable. > > > > I continue to search for a way of making the Win7 VM stable, but no luck so > far. This isn’t a .NET related problem, but I’d love to hear from anyone > else who has suffered from this problem and solved it. > > > > My other option is to not us a VM and install VS2010, Framework 4 and > Silverlight 4 and all of the supporting kits on my work machine alongside > their previous versions. Cramming everything together gives me a creepy > feeling. Before I consider doing this, I just wanted to ask if this is > acceptable in theory and in practise. Has anyone got everything installed > side-by-side and can report success or side effects. I don’t want to > destroy the machine I use to make a living. > > > > Greg >
RE: Mixing development software versions
Hey Greg, I had similar issues with Win7 in VirtualBox. Performance progressively degraded until it became really bad. I had made a bunch of changes to the config of the VM so could not be sure which change made it go bad, but I could not resolve it. At any rate, I actually used VMWare command line tools to convert the VM image into a VMWare file (it was a .VHD) and loaded it into VMWare and everything worked fine. Since you are already in VMWare, you could try using some of the command line tools to perform a conversion into another format, or try export/import into Virtual Box. Note that all these processes take a long time so its time consuming to try it, then have it not work. I really don't like Virtual PC 2007 in Win7 tho and have had many issues with it. VirtualBox or VMWare are very good. - Glav From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Wednesday, 4 August 2010 9:20 AM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: Mixing development software versions Folks, I'm preparing for the big migration of all of my projects to VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4. I built a Win7 in WMWare with the latest software development installed so I could rebuild and test everything in parallel with my real work. Unfortunately, problems with the mouse and stalls in VM are ruining my plans. Win7 has a terribly "jittery" mouse in the VM which requires the VMWare drivers be installed to correct the problem. However, the installation of these drivers causes the VM to freeze dead randomly every 5-10 minutes. It seems to freeze when I am manipulating opening and closing tree control nodes in Windows Explorer and the VS2010 solution pane. I spent hours researching this problem and found that if I only install the mouse and video drivers then the problem only happens every 20-30 minutes. This is still unacceptable. I continue to search for a way of making the Win7 VM stable, but no luck so far. This isn't a .NET related problem, but I'd love to hear from anyone else who has suffered from this problem and solved it. My other option is to not us a VM and install VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4 and all of the supporting kits on my work machine alongside their previous versions. Cramming everything together gives me a creepy feeling. Before I consider doing this, I just wanted to ask if this is acceptable in theory and in practise. Has anyone got everything installed side-by-side and can report success or side effects. I don't want to destroy the machine I use to make a living. Greg
Re: Mixing development software versions
On 4 August 2010 09:20, Greg Keogh wrote: > Folks, I’m preparing for the big migration of all of my projects to > VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4. I built a Win7 in WMWare with the > latest software development installed so I could rebuild and test everything > in parallel with my real work. Unfortunately, problems with the mouse and > stalls in VM are ruining my plans. > > > > > What version of VMware? -- Meski "Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. Sure, you'll get it, but it's going to be rough" - Adam Hills
Re: Mixing development software versions
+1. I know there have been compatibility issues with Windows 7 and 2008 R2 in older versions of VMware ESX (prior to 4.0 U1). One of the symptoms were random freezes. I would assume the same issue occurs in older versions of consumer VMware products as well. Did you install the VMware VGA driver for Windows 7, or the 3D one? On 8/5/10, mike smith wrote: > On 4 August 2010 09:20, Greg Keogh wrote: > >> Folks, I’m preparing for the big migration of all of my projects to >> VS2010, Framework 4 and Silverlight 4. I built a Win7 in WMWare with the >> latest software development installed so I could rebuild and test >> everything >> in parallel with my real work. Unfortunately, problems with the mouse and >> stalls in VM are ruining my plans. >> >> >> >> >> > What version of VMware? > > > -- > Meski > > "Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. Sure, you'll > get it, but it's going to be rough" - Adam Hills > -- Sent from my mobile device
RE: Mixing development software versions
What version of VMware? The host machine is a 2 and a half year old dual core machine running Vista. I installed VMware-server-2.0.1-156745.exe which is the 507MB free server. I’ve been running more experiments with hardware acceleration and the VM Tools in different combinations. It seems that only setting the hardware acceleration totally OFF will overcome the Win7 freezes. Sadly, this cases the mouse to be slightly jittery, not as terribly jittery as it is with no VM Tools installed at all. Perhaps I can live with it like this just for the few weeks required to test all of my software in parallel. Other people here seem to be using different combinations of the VMWare software, or other VM products completely. Their list of VMWare products is bewildering. I was under the impression that only the Server that I’m using is free. I continue to experiment and I’ll report if I find anything useful. Greg
RE: Mixing development software versions
VMWare Server isn’t really designed as a desktop virtualisation product (hence the “server” part of the name). That said, it is free. I’d try VMWare Workstation and see if that solves your problem (I have no issues running Win7 clients in VMWare Workstation), or you can use the free VMWare Player product instead (which lets you create/run VMs, but doesn’t have snapshot etc abilities of VMWare Workstation) Also, as someone else posted, it may be a problem interacting with the underlying hardware (e.g. it’s waiting on some I/O to complete) Cheers Ken From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Thursday, 5 August 2010 1:33 PM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: RE: Mixing development software versions What version of VMware? The host machine is a 2 and a half year old dual core machine running Vista. I installed VMware-server-2.0.1-156745.exe which is the 507MB free server. I’ve been running more experiments with hardware acceleration and the VM Tools in different combinations. It seems that only setting the hardware acceleration totally OFF will overcome the Win7 freezes. Sadly, this cases the mouse to be slightly jittery, not as terribly jittery as it is with no VM Tools installed at all. Perhaps I can live with it like this just for the few weeks required to test all of my software in parallel. Other people here seem to be using different combinations of the VMWare software, or other VM products completely. Their list of VMWare products is bewildering. I was under the impression that only the Server that I’m using is free. I continue to experiment and I’ll report if I find anything useful. Greg
RE: Mixing development software versions
Thanks for everyone’s replies on this subject. Your comments have clarified things and led to a solution. I have downloaded the 104MB VMware-player-3.1.0-261024.exe product and run it through a sanity test. It recognised my previous VMs created with VMWare Server 2 and it opens them; and Windows 7, Windows 2003 Server Standard and Windows XP virtual machines seem to run without any issues. So this is probably the miracle cure I’ve been looking for. I haven’t even installed any of the VM driver tools and it all seems to work. The mouse moves smoothly and I’ve seen no freezes in any VMs (including Windows 7). I still wonder about the relationship between Server, Player and Workstation (and the rest of them). I think VMWare should clarify what all of their products do without the need to read reams of web pages. I’m guessing that Player has low functionality, but for the simple purpose of running parallel environments it’s fine for me. It doesn’t seem to have any “remote console”, but that doesn’t bother me either. Cheers, Greg
