Sharing a vhd with your friends!

Problem:

Today, I was attempting to set up another dev with a vhd which contained our dev enviroment.  I could not get him to boot into the vhd.  I had it working on my box but could not get him up and running.  I was stumped.  I found a technet article by Chris Avis.  Chris does a great job explaining the whole process.  It was good review material but not really anything new until I hit the part about reusing your vhd with other users.  The key was running sysprep.  This takes out machine/profile specific information from the the vhd.  It gives the new user the OOBE (Out of the Box Experience) when they start the vhd the first time.  It also allows the vhd to make specific changes required for the box where it is now running.

Solution:

Now that we have a completely built Windows OS with everything we want installed, we are going to sun SYSPREP to create a distributable package that can be used for Boot to VHD.

1 ) On the virtual machine, run SYSPREP with administrative privileges

Windows 8.1/10/2012 R2 – Click Start, type CMD, right click CMD, select Run as Administrator
Windows 12/2012R2 – From the Start screen, type CMD, right click Command Prompt, select Run as Administrator (bottom of screen)

This will open a CMD prompt window and drop you at the c:\windows\system32 directory

2) Change to the \sysprep directory and run SYSPREP.EXE

3) Select the following options for SYSPREP

System Cleanup Action:  Enter Out-of-Box Experience (OOBE)
Check the “Generalize” box
Shutdown Options:  Shutdown

When you click OK, SYSPREP will remove the current user profile, set Windows to run the Out-of-Box experience on startup (will ask for very basic information on startup), and best of all…..Stop the clock on the trial version!! How long SYSPREP takes is dependent on the speed of the host you are working on, and what applications you installed to Windows. Usually it takes no more than 5-10 minutes for SYSPREP to complete and shutdown the virtual machine.

Source:

1. ) http://blogs.technet.com/b/chrisavis/archive/2013/05/03/boot-to-vhd-configuring-creating-a-reusable-trial-version-image-and-more.aspx
2.)http://fetchmytip.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-to-enable-virtualization-on-hp.html

How to enable virtualization on HP Probook 6565 B

Step 1:

Get CRM.vhd 

Step 2:

Put file on your c drive recommend c:\vm\crm.vhd

Step 3:

Tweak your boot menu

a.       Make a boot copy record

·          bcdedit /copy {default} /d "New Name"

b.      Get the GUID of the new boot record

·         Bcdedit

·         Read the GUID of your new record

c.       Change the boot record to point at your vhd file

·         bcdedit /set {GUID} osdevice vhd=[C:]\folder\filename.vhd  

·         bcdedit /set {GUID} device vhd=[C:]\folder\filename.vhd

·         bcdedit /set description "Windows 10 VHD"

Step 4:
 

• Enable virtualization on your HP 6565
• Reboot your system and press F10
• Go to System Configuration Tab
• Scroll down to Virtualization Technology and check the box
• change BIOS Security Settings from View to Change for virtualization. 
• Save changes to BIOS and exit
• Reboot

Step 5

When you reboot your will be presented with the option of os to load. 

Can my laptop support Windows Phone 8 emulator

I was wondering if a laptop would support windows phone 8 development.
The first step is to download CoreInfo.exe at

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc835722

Win 8.1 with virutalization enabled on box with RAlink bluetooth for HP envy 700-056

I wrote about this issue earlier at http://fetchmytip.blogspot.de/2014/03/issues-with-wp8fullexe-windows-phone.html. 

Problem:
Installed windows 8.1 upgrade with virtualization enabled and box rebooted but never finished the install!  This occurred when I was trying to do windows phone development with the WP8 SDK.  The phone emulator requires that virtualization is enabled.


Solution:

The Bluetooth driver for the RAlink 3290 board was for win 8 and not win 8.1 each time the reboot occurred it would attempt to load the driver and prevent the reboot.  The solution was to locate the correct drivers. 

Mediatek 802.11 Wireless LAN Adapter Driver
Type: Driver - Network
Version: 1.00 (19 Sep 2013)
Operating System(s): Microsoft Windows 8.1 (32-bit), Microsoft Windows 8.1 (64-bit)
File name: sp63302.exe (38 MB)

Type: Driver - Network - Mediatek Bluetooth Software Driver
Version: 2.9.19.0 (22 Oct 2013)
Operating System(s): Microsoft Windows 8.1 (32-bit), Microsoft Windows 8.1 (64-bit)
File name: sp64041.exe (89 MB)

Installing both still did not solve the issue.  What is weird is that once I uninstalled the drivers for the Bluetooth device the virtualization started to work.  Since I do not need the Bluetooth device then leaving it disabled is fine and will allow me to do WP 8.1 development!

Issues with WP8_full.exe (Windows Phone SDK) causing win 8.1 crash

I have been battling this issue for the last few days.  I have done any number of fixes after trying to install the windows phone SDK onto VS 2012.  Once having successfully installed the SDK a reboot is required.  When you this the system never recovers upon reboot.  I have learned to have back up a restore point. This has helped me since I have tried any number of fixes to get this installed and working.  It is definitely an issue with the SDK install and the virtualization. 

There are a number of recommended fixes online which all revolve around issues with virtualization and the SDK.  I am trying a new wrinkle on the installation.   I have disabled the virtualization on my motherboard.  Now I am installing the SDK, and this did not fix the issue

This is an ongoing issue with a bad driver.  The HP box I am fighting with has a wifi/Bluetooth card from RALink RT_3290.  The driver I was using to upgrade to 8.1 was for 8.0.  The driver was not available from RAlink since they were bought out by MediaLink.  Once I located the correct drivers, I reinstalled the drivers and still had issues until I uninstalled the Bluetooth drivers and rebooted.


Mediatek 802.11 Wireless LAN Adapter Driver
By downloading, you agree to the terms and conditions of the HP Software License Agreement.
Type: Driver - Network
Version: 1.00 (19 Sep 2013)
Operating System(s): Microsoft Windows 8.1 (32-bit), Microsoft Windows 8.1 (64-bit)

Mediatek Bluetooth Software Driver
File name: sp63302.exe (38 MB)
Type: Driver - Network -
Version: 2.9.19.0 (22 Oct 2013)
Operating System(s): Microsoft Windows 8.1 (32-bit), Microsoft Windows 8.1 (64-bit)
File name: sp64041.exe (89 MB)