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Mr Snrub

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Everything posted by Mr Snrub

  1. So if I have this right, you had a clean installation of Windows Vista Ultimate, and in your user profile under Documents you had a folder structure from an old Windows XP profile, so something like: C:\Users\msfncjem\Documents\My Documents C:\Users\msfncjem\Documents\My Music C:\Users\msfncjem\Documents\My Pictures ...etc. The MP3s that went astray - were they under C:\Users\msfncjem\Documents\My Music or C:\Users\msfncjem\Music ? Interestingly, I just tried to create a "My Music" folder under C:\Users\MrSnrub\Documents on a Vista SP2 machine and it pops up the message: On clicking OK, the folder vanishes. On clicking Cancel, the folder is created but named "New Folder". So I wonder how you managed to get a folder named "My Music" into the Documents folder in the first place... Non-existent how?Empty, or throw an error if you try to access them? [theory] I suspect that if the data had been migrated correctly from XP to Vista, the "My Music" folder contents would have been redirected to the Music folder directly in the user profile and you wouldn't have had any problem, but that during the upgrade the profile was parsed and Documents\My Music was implicitly redirected to Music, which was empty and so migrated nothing... [/theory]
  2. Can you set up a Private virtual network and connect the XP guest to it instead of the External network, put static IPs on the host and the client and then see if the throughput is the same?
  3. Strange... I just did a clean install of XP SP2, installed the Integration Services, applied SP3 and then did a copy of the SP3 installer (316MB) from the VM to a different disk on the host machine, which took ~19 seconds with an Explorer drag & drop operation and 13.4 seconds from the command line. For comparison, the same file copied to the host volume where the VM's VHD is held took ~21 seconds in Explorer and 14.4 seconds from the command line. WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe is 331,805,736 bytes, which would put the approximate average throughputs at: Explorer, different volume: 139.7 Mbps Command line, different volume: 198.1 Mbps Explorer, same volume: 126.4 Mbps Command line, same volume: 184.3 Mbps The Hyper-V host is Windows Server 2008 R2, not Windows Server 2008 SP2, however - I don't have a W2K8 Hyper-V host to do a similar test unfortunately. The host is also standalone with no other roles except File & Print Server. Copying the same file to a VM on the same host, but whose VHD file was on a different volume, took ~8.5 seconds through both Explorer and from the command line. I know that Windows Server 2008 R2 supports VDI with Hyper-V and the Remote Desktop Services roles, but I don't know of any serious changes to Hyper-V to make non-Server versions of Windows run better then previously... has anyone else got XP running under Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 and can comment on network throughput from guest to host or guest to guest?
  4. Is the VHD file for the child partition on the same physical disk as the host is using for the destination? That would be the same as doing a file copy within the same volume - there is only 1 disk read/write head so copying data will be around half as fast as it could be. Physical clients on the network wouldn't incur this problem because they are accessing their local disks in parallel with the file server.
  5. TIPS OF CONTENTION Some tweaks & recommendations are based on previous versions of Windows, experience during beta testing rather than RTM, experience from specific hardware configurations, or simply "I heard this somewhere so it must be true". The most obvious ones I can think of are: - Disable the Superfetch service [to reduce disk I/O] - Enable LargeSystemCache [to increase the maximum size of the system cache, as used by file servers] - Disable the Windows Search service [to reduce disk I/O] - Turn off the page file completely [to reduce disk I/O and make the system more responsive] - Disable services X, Y and Z [to recover wasted system resources] - Hack TCPIP.SYS to allow more than 10 simultaneous outbound connections SUPERFETCH On the following remark I have to call foul on technical accuracy (not opinion): "The obvious disadvantage is anything else you do during this precaching will be slower in addition your hard drive is been stressed" Superfetch and Windows Search have low priority threads and I/O - if you request something of Windows and it is currently using slack time to do either of these tasks, then they are paused and yours takes precedence. The effectiveness of Superfetch will depend on how predictable your usage is, but I believe it hits way more than it misses, and every cache hit saves you a disk I/O - which might potentially interrupt what you were currently doing, giving you a poorer experience. As it builds up a usage pattern over time, and makes its decisions based on logged-on user and time of day, its accuracy gets better as time passes. LARGESYSTEMCACHE This is an old tweak for XP, which used to cap the amount of memory used for the system cache quite low - setting the above value to 1 would allow the system cache to expand and use a lot more memory, which is the default for Windows Server 2003. Superfetch is (pre)populating the system cache with file sections (not entire files necessarily) and Vista users quickly noticed that "Free" memory appeared to disappear after booting up, scaring them into believing they had some kind of memory leak - this is the indication that the system cache is already "large", and the registry setting doesn't really do anything. WINDOWS SEARCH Similar to the Superfetch argument, the Windows Search service provides a more positive than negative experience for the majority of users. First, it is not "constantly indexing the data" - content is indexed once (which may be a long operation on the first pass, just after install), then only again if it is modified. The more files you have of various types, scattered over many locations, the more benefit you get from an index. Content from various file types can be indexed (including inside email programs) for quick location - much faster than a trawl of the contents of every file on demand. An argument is often "I am organized and put my files where I know how to find them", which is fine - except do you file a photograph of your parents on holiday in 1996 under "Family", "Vacations", "1996"? PAGEFILE Turning off the page file (or at best, fixing its size to "prevent fragmentation") - this is one I've never seen any statistical data to back up the claim that this helps at all. Windows works on a virtual memory model, the sum of physical RAM and some space on disk - the former being a limited and more valuable resource, so when it contains data or code that has not been used in some time, it pages it out to disk to make the space available for something that might make better use of it. The theory is that not having page file forces everything to remain in memory (which is mostly true) and thus makes programs and data "instantly" accessible. The major drawbacks with this: - some applications will flatly refuse to start without a page file - if Windows bugchecks then it is unable to dump the contents of memory to the disk for analysis - more physical RAM used means less space for the system cache, so potentially more disk I/O SERVICES Disabling services has long been held as a performance tweak for Windows - some people claiming to know exactly what each service does and why you don't need it, and that turning it off will greatly improve your life. A lot of services are used by the OS internally, and those that don't need to run all the time are set to do start on demand and stop after a few minutes of idle time. A service that is running but isn't been asked to do anything consumes 0 CPU cycles, and if it has not been doing anything its virtual address space contents will be paged to disk, so it isn't wasting any measurable amount of RAM. A service that isn't needed will incur disk I/O and CPU time only when it starts up. There is a school of thought that says an uneeded service is a potential security hole, but this is generally only true if the service has a listening port that is not firewalled and requires authentication - logging on as a non-Administrator user is the best mitigation for exploits to services, and Windows Vista implements more levels of privileges for service accounts (e.g. a service that only accesses local files does not need any privilege to access the network). TCPIP.SYS The hack (be it a replacement file on disk or an in-memory patch) to modify the number of half-open outbound TCP connections is no longer applicable as of Service Pack 2. It was commonly misquoted that the introduction of the limitaiton in XP SP2 meant no more then 10 connections could be established from the client at any given time, the reality is that at any point in time there could only be up to 10 being set up (hence half open) - once they were completed or rejected they did not count towards the total. The intention was to reduce the impact of clients infected by malware being able to spread to other machines, which it did - the only applications that were negatively affected were of poor design that would attempt to establish multiple TCP connections without verifying first if the endpoint is accessible (i.e. not firewalled or behind NAT), which meant "torrent" applications mainly. It did not, however, affect the speed of the downloads once the client had got past the initial search for seeders. It is no longer applicable as the restriction was removed in SP2, so there is now nothing to hack/patch. HYBRID SLEEP Taking all the above into consideration, now it should be apparent as to why using hybrid sleep & waking the computer is preferable to shutting down & starting up: - services don't need to start, so no disk I/O or initialization routines to wait through - system cache is already populated, so no disk I/O - "button to desktop" time of ~2 seconds, and the system is ready to go (compared with a POST, startup time, profile load and prefetching with a cold boot)
  6. REGISTRY TWEAKS Spooky Add "Open Command Prompt Here" option to context menu [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\Open Command Prompt Here\command] @="cmd.exe /k pushd %L" Remove arrows from shortcuts [verified] Note: This is a better method than removing the "IsShortcut" registry value, which breaks links in Games, Favorites, Media Center, etc. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Shell Icons] "29"="C:\\Windows\\System32\\shell32.dll,52" Disable UAC [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System] "EnableLUA"=dword:00000000 Enable UAC [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System] "EnableLUA"=dword:00000001 Prevent "- Shortcut" being appended to new shortcut names [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] "link"=hex:00,00,00,00 Disable splash screen when launching Windows Mail [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Mail] "NoSplash"=dword:00000001 Turn off UAC consent prompts, but leave it enabled - admin users [verified] Note: This makes members of the Administrators behave the same way as the built-in Administrator account Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System] "ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin"=dword:00000000 "EnableLUA"=dword:00000001 Turn off UAC consent prompts, but leave it enabled - regular users [verified] Note: This removes "over-the-shoulder" (OTS) prompts, so users are unable to request elevation, and get access denied for all administrative tasks Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System] "ConsentPromptBehaviorUser"=dword:00000000 "EnableLUA"=dword:00000001 Disable "Hide operating system files" in Explorer [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced] "SuperHidden"=dword:00000001 Disable tooltips [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced] "ShowInfoTip"=dword:00000000 Allow >2 simultaneous downloads per server through Internet Explorer [not verified] Note: RFC2068 dictates that clients should be limited to 2 simultaneous persistent connections per user, and Windows/IE adheres to this by default but can be overridden (below are the default values, you will need to edit them to suit) Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings] "MaxConnectionsPerServer"=dword:00000002 "MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server"=dword:00000002 Disable Media Player's automatic updates [not verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsMediaPlayer] "DisableAutoUpdate"=dword:00000001 spacesurfer Remove the "Delete" option from the context menu of the Recycle Bin, to prevent accidental deletion [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\shell\Delete] @="Search" "Description"=" Search system files" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\shell\Delete\command] @=hex(2):25,00,77,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,69,00,72,00,25,00,5c,00,65,00,78,00,70,\ 00,6c,00,6f,00,72,00,65,00,72,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,00,00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\shell\Delete\ddeexec] @="[FindFolder(\\\"%l\\\", %I)]" "NoActivateHandler"="" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\shell\Delete\ddeexec\Application] @="Folders" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\shell\Delete\ddeexec\topic] @="AppProperties" Replace "Computer" with "%username% on %computername%" [verified] Note: Does not change the Start menu "Computer" link, but the desktop and breadcrumb trail objects are modified Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}] @="Computer" "LocalizedString"=hex(2):25,00,55,00,73,00,65,00,72,00,6e,00,61,00,6d,00,65,00,\ 25,00,20,00,6f,00,6e,00,20,00,25,00,43,00,6f,00,6d,00,70,00,75,00,74,00,65,\ 00,72,00,6e,00,61,00,6d,00,65,00,25,00,00,00 Add "Advanced System Properties" to Computer context menu [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\shell\AdvSysProp] @=hex(2):41,00,64,00,76,00,61,00,6e,00,63,00,65,00,64,00,20,00,53,00,79,00,73,\ 00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,20,00,50,00,72,00,6f,00,70,00,65,00,72,00,74,00,69,00,\ 65,00,73,00,00,00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\shell\AdvSysProp\command] @=hex(2):63,00,6f,00,6e,00,74,00,72,00,6f,00,6c,00,20,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,64,\ 00,6d,00,2e,00,63,00,70,00,6c,00,00,00 wiSHmaKeR Enable underlining of 'active' character in menu items (i.e. ALT key combination to select that item) [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] "UserPreferencesMask"=hex:b0,12,01,80 arabianhorse Disable "low disk space" warnings [not verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer] "NoLowDiskSpaceChecks"=dword:00000001 spacesurfer Disable web services for unknown file types [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer] "NoInternetOpenWith"=dword:00000001 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer] "NoInternetOpenWith"=dword:00000001 TranceEnergy Maximize worker threads on heavily loaded systems [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Executive] "AdditionalCriticalWorkerThreads"=dword:00000010 "AdditionalDelayedWorkerThreads"=dword:00000010 Prevent kernel and driver code from being paged to disk when not in use [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management] "DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001 Lance_315 Enable Windows Aero in Vista Home Basic [not verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DWM] "Composition"=dword:00000001 "CompositionPolicy"=dword:00000002 alrichdesa Add "Copy To Folder" to Explorer context menu [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\{C2FBB630-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}] Add "Move To Folder" to Explorer context menu [verified] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AllFilesystemObjects\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\{C2FBB631-2971-11D1-A18C-00C04FD75D13}]
  7. POLICY TWEAKS Tripredacus Disable password requirement when resuming from sleep [verified] Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / System / Power Management / Sleep Settings > Require a Password When a Computer Wakes (On Battery) : disable > Require a Password When a Computer Wakes (Plugged In) : disable Disable Link Layer Topology Discovery [verified] Note: Can reduce delays accessing shares on legacy Windows machine, but also disables the Network Map feature Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Network / Link Layer Topology Discovery > Turn on Mapper I/O (LLTDIO) Driver : disable > Turn on Responder (RSPNDR) Driver : disable Spooky Disable Media Player's automatic updates [not verified] Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Media Player > Prevent Automatic Updates : enable spacesurfer Disable web services for unknown file types [verified] Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / System / Internet Communication Management / Internet Communication settings > Turn off Internet File Association service : enable
  8. GENERAL TWEAKS & TIPS FthrJACK Enable file extensions in Explorer [verified] From an Explorer window, click Organize / Folder and Search Options Select the View tab Untick "Hide Extensions of Known File Types" and click OK gunsmokingman Change the size of the icons on the desktop [verified] Note: Also cycles through the view types in Explorer, and scales pages rendered in Internet Explorer Hold down CTRL and use the mouse scroll wheel nitropuppy Using Flip3D feature (on systems running Aero Glass) [verified] Open a few windows then press the Win key + TAB, this makes them all visible each behind the other (Hitting TAB whilst holding down the Win key will flip between the open windows) xper Open a command prompt window from any folder [verified] Hold down SHIFT and right-click the folder in Explorer - click the new context menu option "Open Command Window Here" "Run" command Start Menu option (one-off) [verified] Hold down Win key and press R "Run" command Start Menu option (permanent) [verified] 1. Right-click on the Start menu and choose Properties 2. Click on the Customize button 3. Check the "Run command" option, click OK, click OK ElAguila Enabling / disabling User Account Control (UAC) [verified] Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > User Accounts > Turn User Account Control On or Off Spooky Disable hibernation (remove hiberfil.sys) [verified] Open an elevated command prompt and enter the command: powercfg -h off Windows Internet Computer Names [verified, pointer to TechNet article] "Have you ever wanted to be able to find and connect to your home computer across the Internet, but did not want the complexity and cost of buying a domain name and managing Domain Name System (DNS) records? With Microsoft® Windows Vista™, you can use Windows Internet Computer Names. This article will show you how to configure a Windows Internet Computer Name and use it in common tools and applications." Increasing hard disk performance [verified, but be sure to read the on-screen notes] Go to Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Device Manager Expand Disk Drives For each drive, double-click it and select the Policies tab: make sure "Optimize for Performance" is selected, and if available also tick the "Enable Write Caching on the disk" and "Enable Advanced Performance"options, click OK Enable update of "Last Accessed" on files [verified] Note: This can have an impact on disk performance, as opening a file for reading will now incur a disk write to touch the file Open an elevated command prompt and enter the command: fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 0 Prevent USB hubs turning off to save power after idling [not verified] Note: USB devices (typically hard disks) that were told not to turn off were found to have issues if the hubs were considered idle and being disabled Go to Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Device Manager Expand Universal Serial Bus Controllers For each item 'USB Root Hub', double-click it and select the 'Power Management' tab: uncheck the box 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power', click OK Keyboard shortcut for Task Manager [verified] CTRL+SHIFT+ESC Assigning keyboard shortcuts to programs [verified] 1. Create a shortcut for the program, then right-click it and select Properties 2. Select Shortcut tab then click inthe 'Shortcut key' box 4. Press the key that you want to use for your shortcut, then click OK Note: The keyboard shortcut you are creating is triggered with CTRL+ALT held down Note: If you accidentically delete the shortcut (.lnk) file, you will need to unassign the shortcut key and then re-assign it again Avoiding 'Open File - Security Warning' popup for downloaded files [verified] Files downloaded from an untrusted location, such as the Internet, are automatically tagged through "Internet Security Zones", and attempting to such run a program will present a warning dialog box asking "Do you want to run this file?" To prevent seeing this message, on the General tab of the properties of the file, click the Unblock button Alternatively, on first run, untick the box "Always ask before opening this file" Make a program shortcut always run elevated [verified] On the properties of the shortcut, select the Shortcut tab and click the Advanced button - check the box "Run as administrator" and click OK twice Automatically log on [verified] Note: The user account to automatically log on as must already exist, and this is definitely not recommended for Administrator accounts Click the Start button, enter in the Search or Run box: netplwiz Uncheck the box "Users must enter a username and password to use this computer' box, click Apply Enter the name and password (if any) in the fields presented, click OK on both windows Custom toolbars on the desktop [verified] Create a new folder on your desktop and populate it with your shortcuts/files Drag the folder to the edge of the screen and let go of the mouse button Note: You will still have the desktop icon for the folder, and you shouldn't delete it, you can however relocate and resize it to suit mcarfixer Address toolbar at the top of the screen [verified] Using the trick above to create a toolbar at the top of the screen, right-click the toobar and from the Toolbars context menu add the Address toolbar Right-click on the original toolbar and click "Close toolbar", you can now delete the folder from the desktop (it has served its purpose) fizban2 Launch an application elevated from the Start / Search box [verified] Click the Start orb, in the Search box enter the name of the application, then hit CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER to request elevated launch Mr Snrub Recovering a Recycle Bin accidentally deleted from the desktop [verified] Right click on the desktop, click Personalize Click 'Change desktop icons' Check the box 'Recycle Bin', click OK
  9. This is a compiled list of tips, tricks & tweaks for Windows Vista, using this 3 year-old thread started by Martin L as a base. For each entry copied, the original poster has been credited. Where possible, the tips have been verified as accurate on Windows Vista x86 SP2 (running under Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2). Some of the original entries were only applicable during early betas and so have not been included. Each entry is tagged as [verified] if I managed to implement it can confirm the desired effect. Where external references were broken due to age, they have been removed. Tips fall into 3 categories: - through the UI with user interaction - through group/local policy editing - through registry editing The UI methods are often just a friendly front-end for editing the registry, and group or local policy is just a set of dynamic changes to the registry without "tattooing" it (so they are reverted back to their original settings if you return to "not configured") - so there may be multiple ways to achieve the same goal. At the end is a discussion on a few common "performance tweaks", with citations from the original thread where available, along with my personal views & reasons for not using any of them. The section is thus named "tips of contention" - I can guarantee there will be people that disagree with me and will claim first-hand experience to the contrary. To add to these posts, please PM me the addition or a pointer to an existing post to copy/paste from. To keep the thread clean it has been locked, questions can be made in separate posts if needed.
  10. Physical machines you "took an image of" - can you talk us through how you achieved this? Tools like SCVMM have P2V components to install an agent on physical machines and migrate them into Hyper-V, stripping out device drivers and replacing them with virtual ones compatible with the target host, but I'm guessing you didn't use this as the System Center suite isn't free. I guess the easiest way to verify if it was that process would be to set up an identical VM from scratch and do a clean install of XP SP3 & the Integration Services, then compare how it performs...
  11. Roughly how long before the problem occurs, or is it completely random? You say logging off and back on again doesn't resolve the problem - what about if you log on as a different user? What happens when you click a link to download a file? (Nothing at all? IE or a tab becomes unresponsive?) Is it ALL files, or specifically .zip and .exe? Did you have the problem before installing AV? (Or maybe you had AV since shortly after installation, so you don't know?) Even with a "web access protection" component disabled, my first suspicion would be with AV (realtime scanning or a kernel filter driver)...
  12. Ack, sorry I read the original post as SP1 for some reason - as cluberti says there's no need to remove or reinstall SP2, just clean up & service pack the VMs.[it's preferred to use the host for only the Hyper-V role btw, if this is just a dev environment then no worries.]
  13. nVidia GTX285 here, I can see the symptoms of the first video but no matter what I try I can't get above a spike of 50% of one core utilization with the Explorer/thumbnail issue. To be honest I had not even noticed those symptoms, probably because the repro steps are kind of obtuse - I have seen artifcating of window contents or the wallpaper when switching between a fullscreen app and the desktop, this was 100% down to the Forceware drivers (reverting the "upgrade" from nVidia removed the symptom). I'd say that most likely has to be poor or non-existent 2D acceleration on nVidia's part. Given the frequent releases of the driver package to address individual game issues, it's not unfeasible to believe it.
  14. What AV and/or 3rd party firewall do you have installed?
  15. Yipes - okay when you installed the Hyper-V role, you added the beta bits and Integration Services (as the host is currently running SP1, the release version).To be honest, I would do the following in your situation: - delete or merge all snapshots on all VMs - uninstall the Integrations Services on all VMs - shut down (not save) all VMs - remove the Hyper-V role from the host and reboot - apply Windows Server 2008 x64 SP2 - add the Hyper-V role (which will now no longer be beta and have several hotfixes included) - start the VMs and add the Integration Services When setting up a new environment, I would always start at the latest SP level for each OS - service packs often contain more than just the hotfix packages which exist on Windows Updates or can be found through KB articles.5.1 kernel (XP): SP3 5.2 kernel (W2K3, XP x64): SP2 6.0 kernel (Vista, W2K8): SP2 The networking stack was written from the ground up on Vista, so I'd leave it for now as you know other physical machines can communicate with the same server through the same NIC at a reasonable speed.If you're running AV on the host, also make sure that the folders related to Hyper-V are excluded from scanning, it can also be worth testing with AV removed (not just disabled) to see if it has any effect on the throughput. Is the throughput the same in either direction between the VMs and the host?
  16. Okay, if you have an XP client that uploads via SMB to one W2K3 server slowly, but the same client to a different W2K3 server on the same LAN fast, then we have a scenario we can compare.(If one of the servers is via a gateway then we don't have a like-for-like test, but maybe something useful anyway.) Use NetMon or WireShark to capture 2 traces whilst copying a dummy ~20MB file to the 2 servers. Use the command prompt to do the copy to rule out Explorer overhead, and let us know the times the same transfer took. (Hint: use a batch file to echo %time% before and after the copy command to get accurate timings.) Use a dummy user account and non-sensitive file contents and zip the files & upload them somewhere for me to take a look. It's been a few years since I dealt with this kind of thing, so I might be a bit rusty, but we can look for delayed ACKs, retransmissions, dodgy MTUs, etc.
  17. Do you have the Integration Services installed in the VM? (I am assuming yes, if you got the synthetic NIC to work.)Did you install the Hyper-V RTM bits before adding the Hyper-V role? (KB950050) What if you use a Private network instead of an External one, do you get the same kind of throughput between the child and parent partitions? What about SMB transfer speeds from the VM to physical machines on the LAN, other than the host? Any reason you're not using SP3 on the XP VM? Are there any other VMs on this host that you can use for testing, maybe with other versions of Windows? Synthetic ("regular") network adapters are preferred. Elaborate here a bit, just to clarify - are you talking about other VMs on the same host, or other VMs on a differnet host, or physical machines on the LAN? What version of Windows work for the other machines?You could test setting TcpAckFrequency to 1 on the XP machine and rebooting: KB328890
  18. I agree with cluberti that removing the folder (immediately) after the installation of a service pack is safe - however it contains the various branches of the hotfixes that may need migrating as part of the service pack installation, so shouldn't be deleted beforehand. The absence of the folder might not block a service pack being installed, but it would mean that you run the risk of regressing some dual mode hotfixes (i.e. applicable for your current SP level and the one you are service packing up to). We also had a few cases recently where a customer had deleted that folder and it was preventing a COM+ hotfix installation on W2K3 due to a previous QFE version from another hotfix package being missing from $hg_mig$. All in all a low risk, but so is the disk space gained by deleting it
  19. In fact you can only run either the full virtual machine OR selected apps from within it directly on your desktop. In either case the virtual machine enters the running state, it's just not visible in the latter case.
  20. Like this - here is a scaled-down crop of my Windows 7 x64 desktop with 2 XP Mode apps running on it: There is also the "compare features" page over here.
  21. Not quite - it leverages hardware assisted virtualization, has "RAIL-like" seamless application support (i.e. run apps inside the VM but have them behave as if they are directly running on the host) and supports USB devices in the VM.
  22. That would be a good call, if you've also been getting oddities with the display itself - I had a couple of Dell LCDs a few years back with built-in USB ports and one of them decided to just quit working spontaneously (the hub in it, that is).You also don't have to wait for a bugcheck, if you fire up PerfMon and look at Memory / Pool Nonpaged Bytes. You know the absolute ceiling is at 256MB, and in the dumps there was ~187MB still allocated for completed IRPs, so watch if this figure constantly climbs still.
  23. As with the other dumps, we have a problem completing IRPs, seemingly against USB devices: (I viewed only 6 or 7 from the gigantic list, but they were all similar to the above.) KB925528 updates USBUHCI.SYS and USBPORT.SYS to 5.1.2600.3081, dated 2007-02-09. KB949483 updates USBHUB.SYS to 5.1.2600.3325, dated 2008-03-04. (Both included in SP3). What USB devices are connected to the machine? "lm" reports LVUSBSta.sys is unloaded quite a few times, is this a Logitech webcam? If there are USB devices connected, I would see if running without them attached still triggers the problem. If you want to do something proactive, then either or both of the hotfix packages above can be downloaded from a link at the top of each page.
  24. Is there anything consistent about the activity of the client when it bugchecks?I can see the uptime in the debug output is 1 day 23 hours, was there anything different done over these 2 days that could have made the problem occur quicker? When did the problem start, and what has been changed on the machine around that time? (New devices connected, software updated or installed, BIOS updates or changes, etc.) The output from lmft is often useful:- lm lists the modules loaded into the kernel - f is for the full path for each module (can sometimes help identifying what a module is if the name doesn't help) - t means show the timstamps (to help spot really old drivers quickly) Please do, and we can take a deeper look.Any reason you're not on SP3? Any reason you are using UPHCLEAN on an XP client? From your output it seems the same as the other issue - csrss.exe is crashing, causing the bugcheck, but the reason for the process crash is the in-page failure caused by nonpaged pool memory exhaustion. Also similar to the other dump, the nonpaged pool seems to have been blown on I/O Request Packets (I am assuming the output from !irpfind was just a sample, and it ran on for pages and pages?). One thing I often do with a big list of IRPs is to take a sample from the beginning, middle and end and then run !irp on them (the IRP number is the first in each list entry, such as 82f05008, 82f05378, etc. from your output) - e.g. !irp 82f05008 - this can let you know the device/filter driver that is waiting to process the IRP, and who is meant to be performing the completion routine.
  25. I would guess that is consent.exe - the UAC process that fires up when you try to launch a process whose default privilege level says it wants to run administrative tasks. Does the problem affect all users, or just 1 specific user? Did you install or update any software recently, like AV? When did the problem start? Are you running SP2?
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