The Remote Desktop team just did an interesting post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/rds/archive/2009/12/15/remoteapp-for-hyper-v.aspx About the RemoteApp for Hyper-V functionality that is available with Windows Server 2008 R2. 

Today if you want to compact a virtual hard disk – you can use Virtual PC / Virtual Server / Hyper-V or Windows 7.  But not all methods are the same.  Under the covers there are two different approaches that are taken to compacting virtual hard disks: Virtual PC / Virtual Server: Perform a blind “block level” compaction.  Here the virtual hard disk is inspected at a block level, and when a block is found which is full of zeroes, the block is removed from the virtual hard disk.

I have been wanting to come up with a workable solution for mounting virtual hard disks by double clicking on them in Windows 7 for a while now.  The problem is that:

• There is no easily scriptable API for VHD mounting


• You need to be elevated (running “As Administrator”) in order to mount a virtual hard disk

The best idea I could think of for a simple solution was to try scripting the DISKPART tool.  Unfortunately – once I got going I got a bit carried away.  The result is this batch file:

When it comes to minimizing the potential for malicious software running in a virtual machine to affect your physical computer, there are two golden rules to follow:

• Secure the virtual machine just like you would a physical computer.  This means installing antivirus / anti-malware software, configuring firewalls, regularly installing updates, etc…
• Reduce the potential paths for the virtual machine to access your physical computer.

In the latter category there are three common paths:

In case you did not see the announcements yesterday – you can now get your hands on the Windows 7 RC (release candidate) build for testing.  You can also download the beta of Windows Virtual PC, and the beta for Wi

Over on the Windows Blog, Scott Woodgate has given us a brief glance of Windows Virtual PC, which will be part of Windows 7.  One of the most exciting features is the new “Windows XP mode” which is designed to help people with Windows XP applications as they move to Windows 7:

Mike Kolitz has just released "WIM2VHD".  This is a tool that allows you to take the WIM file off of a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 install DVD and turn it directly into a virtual hard disk that can be used by Hyper-V, Virtual Server or Virtual PC.  Not only is this handy - it is *fast*.  Usually under 10 minutes to get up and running. You can download the tool from here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wim2vhd

In Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 VHD support is now part of the platform.  This means that you do not need to enable Hyper-V to mount and manipulate virtual hard disks.  You can mount virtual hard disks directly on your Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 system in two ways.  The first is to use the Disk Management UI:

A little while ago I blogged about the fact that you can install Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 on top of Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 with no need to install integration components.  Well - a number of people have noticed that when you do this there are a number of event log entries created that claim that drivers were unable to load because they are the wrong version. Unfortunately this is the result of a bug in our version checking code - and these event log entries should just be ignored (for this specific combination of guest and parent).

You might be interested to know that this is a combination that works just fine.  Here is a screenshot of Windows 7 on Virtual PC 2007 on Windows 7: