Author Archives: niall

RAM, Virtual Memory, Pagefile and all that stuff

Posted on July 30, 2010 by niall

In modern operating systems, including Windows, application programs and many system processes always reference memory using virtual memory addresses which are automatically translated to real (RAM) addresses by the hardware. Only core parts of the operating system kernel bypass this … Continue reading →

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How to Resize a Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) File

Posted on July 30, 2010 by niall

When you create a Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive either through Virtual PC or Virtual Server, you have to specify the maximum size of the file up front. While you can set the VHD to be a fixed or dynamically sized … Continue reading →

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WMI Filters for Group Policy Objects

Posted on July 9, 2010 by niall

Windows XP select * from Win32_OperatingSystem where Version like “5.1%” and ProductType = “1” Windows Server 2003/R2 select * from Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE Version LIKE “5.2%” Any OS prior to Vista select * from Win32_OperatingSystem where Version < “6” Windows 7 select … Continue reading →

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Native VHD Boot on Windows XP

Posted on July 1, 2010 by niall

At work, we are still strictly using Windows XP SP3 as our desktop OS. However, as I’m an avid home user of Windows 7, I was very keen to try it out as my main work OS. I was also particularly … Continue reading →

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Creating a bootable VHD image

Posted on June 28, 2010 by niall

I have been looking for an easy way to create bootable VHD images, to help speed up the deployment of virtual machines. After some searching, I found the Windows Image to Virtual Hard Disk Converter (aka WIM2VHD) — a free … Continue reading →

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Dynamic Memory coming to Hyper-V

Posted on June 27, 2010 by niall

Dynamic Memory — a long awaited enhancement to Hyper-V — is finally on it’s way in Hyper-V R2 SP1. Ben Armstrong (aka Virtual PC Guy) recently gave a presentation at TechEd about Dynamic Memory — he has kindly posted a copy … Continue reading →

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RDS Session Host — Initial Installation & Configuration

Posted on June 27, 2010 by niall

In this video, Matt McSpirit walks through the initial installation and configuration of the RDS Session Host (traditional Terminal Server) in a Windows Server 2008 R2 environment. He enables the roles, sets up the initial bits, and then goes on … Continue reading →

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Microsoft Server Virtualisation Overview (R2)

Posted on June 27, 2010 by niall

This video discusses the Microsoft Server Virtualisation R2 Technologies, which includes aspects such as Hyper-V as part of Windows Server 2008 R2 and also Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

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