Virtual PC

Connectix Virtual PC 5.1 for OS/2 ================================= (C) 2001-2002 InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH (C) 1996-2002 Connectix Inc. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!! I M P O R T A N T !!! !!! Virtual PC 5 contains significant enhancements which !!! possibly require user interaction when migrating guest !!! images from a previous version. Please read the !!! following information very carefully. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1. Overview ----------- Virtual PC for OS/2 allows you to run additional operating systems on top of your OS/2 system. It is based on Virtual PC by Connectix Corporation, delivering the most advanced virtualization technology available. For general information about how to install, configure and use the product, please refer to the documentation on the CDROM. This document will provide technical information that is not mentioned in the manual and typically more up to date. It also lists the currently known problems with the product and possible solutions. 2. Prerequisites ---------------- 2.1 Hardware ------------ 2.1.1 CPU --------- Virtual PC supports Athlon, Duron, Celeron, Pentium II, Pentium III and Pentium 4 CPUs with at least 400MHz (600MHz recommended). Please note that older processors such as Pentium MMX, AMD K6-II or AMD K6-III are no longer supported by Virtual PC version 5. It is not possible to use the application with any of these CPUs. Due to the plethora of problems with OS/2 on SMP and very different hardware behavior, we officially do not support SMP. We have tried our best to make the software work well on SMP but it is impossible to guarantee smooth operation on all SMP systems. 2.1.2 Memory ------------ Virtual PC allocates memory for the guest operating system that will not be available to the host system and applications while the guest system is running. The amount of memory can be assigned by the user and is usually determined by the type of guest operating system. In a typical configuration with a Windows 2000 guest, one would assign 96MB of RAM to the guest and therefore require to have 96MB in addition to what is needed for sufficient performance for the host OS/2 and its applications. Note that the memory assigned to a guest is physically allocated and cannot reside in the swapper file. 2.2 Software ------------ 2.2.1 Base Operating System --------------------------- Virtual PC for OS/2 is only supported on a Convenience Pack level of OS/2 (MCP1, MCP2, ACP1, ACP2) and WorkSpace On-Demand 2.0 with Fixpack 16. It has been tested with earlier versions of OS/2 (Warp 4 FP8 and higher) and no problems could be identified. However, such configurations are not officially supported by InnoTek. eComStation by Serenity Systems is also supported. Warp 3 is not supported at this time. 2.2.2 Graphics Driver --------------------- Virtual PC for OS/2 is very graphics intensive and sensitive to graphics driver issues. InnoTek recommends using Scitech Display Doctor - either the retail version from Scitech or the OEM version SDD/se from IBM. Using any other driver can cause severe problems. Virtual PC for OS/2 is optimized for GRADD based display drivers. However, InnoTek is very interested in getting feedback on user experiences with other display drivers. This allows us to selectively look at supporting Virtual PC with other display drivers based on user demand. Unless your graphics driver supports hardware color cursors (the vast majority of OS/2 graphics drivers including Scitech don't), make sure you only use monochrome (black & white) mouse cursors. Using non monochrome mouse cursors will lead to display corruptions inside the Virtual PC window. 2.2.3 TCP/IP ------------ Virtual PC for OS/2 requires a 32bit level of the TCP/IP stack. This means that the command "inetver" needs to return a level of 6.x. OS/2 versions past Warp 4 come with a 32bit IP stack. For Warp 4, you need to update your MPTS to level WR8620 or later. Refer to the usual IBM fixpak sites to download these updates. 3. Installation --------------- 3.1 Update Installation ----------------------- The installer can update an existing installation of Virtual PC for OS/2. All your settings and virtual machines will be preserved. However, you have to shut down all virtual machines prior to installing the update. If there are virtual machines in the saved state mode (i.e. they have been suspended), the saved states will be lost after the update. This will correspond to pulling the power plug of a desktop PC while it is running and the same risks apply. 3.2 Unattended Installation (CID) --------------------------------- Virtual PC for OS/2 fully supported unattended installations based on the CID method. For detailed information about how to do an unattended installation of Virtual PC, please refer to the manual. 3.3 Workspace on Demand ----------------------- Virtual PC for OS/2 bas been certified on IBM WorkSpace On-Demand. Note that the hardware and software requirements also apply for WSOD clients. To obtain more information for how to perform an installation in a WSOD environment, please contact InnoTek Support. 3.4 Virtual PC keyboard monitor ------------------------------- Virtual PC comes with a keyboard monitor driver (vpckbmon.exe) that can be installed to CONFIG.SYS to allow Virtual PC to intercept certain OS/2 system key combinations (Ctrl-Esc, Alt-Esc, Alt-Tab, C-A-D). It can be selected during installation. The keyboard monitor will be active when a virtual machine receives input focus and can be configured through the Virtual PC preferences. Note that the Virtual PC keyboard monitor might not be compatible with certain other keyboard monitors. Most often, you find keyboard monitors in remote control applications like PolyPM/RSM, NetOp, Tivoli, etc. In case you experience system hangs starting Virtual machines or using your remote control application, it is recommended to remove either the remote control application or the Virtual PC keyboard monitor. This can be achieved through the Virtual PC Setup application. 3.5 Full Screen Mode -------------------- Limited support for running guest operating systems in full screen mode has been added to Virtual PC for OS/2. The full screen mode will always run at the current OS/2 resolution and color depth. If the guest operating systems supports automatic resolution changing and the Virtual PC Additions have been installed (most versions of Windows), the guest will either be centered or resized to the OS/2 resolution when switching to full screen mode. This depends on the File-Preferences- Full Screen Mode setting (Adjust guest to match host will resize the guest). Full support for full screen including changing the color depth and resolution on the fly is not available right now due to missing OS/2 functionality. 3.6 Guest Image Migration from Virtual PC 4.x --------------------------------------------- Virtual PC 5 contains significant enhancements since version 4.x. Using several patent-pending technologies, Virtual PC 5 is able to reduce the performance penalty of a virtual machine compared to a physical machine to less than 5% in most situations. These enhancements come along with several changes in the virtual hardware. For Windows guests, this means that a hardware redetection will be performed (Windows 9x, Me, 2000, XP). For Windows 2000 and XP guests, it is possible that after the update, they will boot in VGA resolution and the keyboard and mouse will not function. This can be solved by resetting the VM and before Windows is booting, selecting "PC - Install/Update Additions". It is also possible to use F8 to boot the Windows safe mode. To experience the significant performance enhancements that have been made for Windows NT, 2000 and XP, it is required to update the guest Additions to the level provided with Virtual PC 5 (10.x). For Windows NT guests, it is required to remove the DEC 21041 network card and install the driver for the DEC 21140 card. This requires access to the Windows NT installation media. 4. List of Changes ------------------ 2002-10-15: Virtual PC 5.1 Build 370 - based on the latest Connectix Virtual PC 5.1 with numerous enhancements and fixes: - additional UI customization through registry keys - several fixes for different guest systems - updated Virtual Switch driver with improved reliability and performance - fixed host LANDD / 3270 communication errors with Virtual Switch driver - fixed synchronization issues for SMP systems - fixed crash on startup on systems with IP alias addresses configured - fixed audio CD playback issues - fixed crash when creating differencing disk images 2002-09-26: Version 5.0 Build 350 - based on the latest Connectix Virtual PC 5.0 with significant performance enhancements and fixes: - substantial improvements in performance and speed - CPU resource control allows user command of CPU usage - ACPI support increases compatibility with imported or exported PC disk images using technologies such as Norton Ghost or PowerQuest Drive Image - increased RAM support - user can assign up to 1 GB RAM per virtual machine - implemented limited fullscreen support - improved virtual machine scheduling by making the OS/2 kernel schedule in 8ms instead of 32ms (temporary time critical thread) - fixed installer to always update Virtual Switch to the current level - enhanced installer to be fully CID compliant with CID return codes - display warning in installer if DIVE subsystem is not present (DIVE.DLL and SSMDD.SYS) - added bldlevel information to all binaries - added vpcsetup.exe /tweakvpc to access undocumented configuration options (use at your own risk!) - disable use of OS2CDROM.DMD ASPI pass-through by default to workaround issues with Adaptec SCSI drivers - fixed startup delay when HOSTNAME was not set and DNS could not be contacted - fixed system hang after crashes of VPC (which hopefully never happen in the first place!) - fixed various synchronization issues with RAM semaphores - fixed synchronization issues for SMP systems - improved latencies in sound support (still disabled by default and unsupported) - fixed potential system hang when minimizing VPC - fixed mouse handling without mouse pointer integration - increased directory listing performance with Shared Folders - fixed handling of files and directories containing special characters (e.g. umlauts) with Shared Folders - improved reliability of COM port handling - fixed traps in vpcapp.sys when assigning large amounts of RAM to a virtual machine - added tweak to autohide mouse cursor when painting in the guest screen to work around screen corruption with software mouse cursors (will cause flicker) - added support for German, French, Japanese, Italian and Spanish as user interface languages - fixed codepage translation issues with Shared Folders - fixed PMMERGE resource leak - several other minor bug fixes... 2002-07-12: Version 4.3.2 - based on the latest Connectix Virtual PC 4.3.2 version with numerous enhancements and fixes - added keyboard monitor component to allow OS/2 hotkey handling in guest window (Ctrl-Esc, Alt-Esc, Alt-Tab, C-A-D) - vpcapp.sys no longer requires KEE, making it possible to install Virtual PC on OS/2 Warp 4 FP8 or higher (note that this is not supported by InnoTek) - fixed several traps in vpcapp.sys when assigning more than 160MB RAM to a virtual machine - added support for SMP systems. Virtual PC no longer binds to the second CPU. - moved user specific settings to the HKCU registry tree (automatic conversion to preserve configuration) - fixed excessive DLL lookup (uxtheme.dll) - fixed CDROM handling - fixed audio CD playback - fixed slowdown on systems without CDROM - file dialog now remembers last directory - fixed window deactivation on minimize - fixed drop down combobox handling - fixed VM listbox flickering when running more than one VM - fixed creation time off by 1h issue for Shared Folders - fixed infinite loops with certain dialog accelerators - fixed keyboard accelerators for dialog controls (pressing a push button with the space bar did not work) - set maximum container file size to 2GB by default (used to be unrestricted for JFS and UDF) - fixed parallel port handling. VPC now queries OS/2 Resource Manager for parallel port settings to support non standard LPT IO ports. - implemented full support for DVD media. This requires the May 2001 level of IDEDASD (included with Virtual PC) Note that SCSI drives are not supported. - improved COM port handling - fixed several problems with the Shared Folders file dialog - implemented performance improvements due to better multithreading - fixed Novell Netware small Ethernet frame handling - fixed wave playback and recording - prevent Virtual PC from growing virtual hard drives beyond 2GB - even on JFS and UDFS. Instead, split files will be created. 2002-03-31: Version 4.2 General Availability - initial public version 5. Known Problems ----------------- - due to problems with several sound chips, sound support has been disabled in this version of the product. It might be reenabled in a future release. Note that this is not a problem with Virtual PC but rather a problem with many OS/2 sound drivers not being able to handle small buffers. Especially the current Crystal sound drivers are very problematic. The ESS PCI sound drivers lead to constant system hangs after running VPC for about 30-45 minutes. Note that there is an undocumented way of enabling sound support in this version of Virtual PC. For more information, refer to the product support site. - Virtual Hard Disks (VHD) that map a physical partition or drive are not supported in version. This might be available in a future version of the product. - when using a OS2CDROM.DMD lever earlier than May 2001, reading multi-session CDROMs and DVDs is not possible. - when using the Additions software with mouse pointer integration and using colored mouse pointers, the mouse cursors will automatically be converted to black & white. This is due to the vast majority of OS/2 display drives (including SDD) not supporting hardware color cursors. This is not an OS/2 or Virtual PC limitation. You should urge your display driver manufacturer to add support for hardware color cursors. If SDD supports colored cursors, we will allow using colored cursors in a future version of the product. - when using the Styler/2 desktop enhancer, the system might hang with mouse pointer integration. The solution is to uninstall or disable Styler/2. - when using Shared Networking, TCPBEUI (NETBIOS over TCP/IP) is not supported. This will be fixed in a future version of the product. - using VHD files that are larger than 2GB will not work with this version. This is due to a change preventing VHD files growing over 2GB. The change was made because OS/2's handling of files > 2GB is very limited and often causes problems. In order to continue to use VHD files larger than 2GB, the old behavior needs to be restored. This can be done with the tweaker. - when using SOCKS and the SOCKS server is not available (e.g. the network connection is not present), there might be a delay when Virtual PC is starting up. To fix this, make sure you disable SOCKS when there is no connection to the SOCKS server. 6. Support ---------- Support is available for registered Virtual PC for OS/2 customers. This includes online support through our support site at http://www.innotek.de/products/virtualpc/. Updates to the product will also be available from this web site. 7. Acknowledgements ------------------- InnoTek would like to thank the following people (in alphabetical order) for their contribution to the project: David Atlas Benjamin Armstrong Aaron Butler Elizabeth Ciapala Parag Chakraborty Paul Craton Daniela Engert Rainer Feuerstein Aaron Giles Randy Hagin Bob John Donald Kaye Jan Lauer Oliver Mark Maryann McGregor Willibald Meyer Ulrich Moeller Ryan Molyneaux Eirik Oeverby Ed Reed Alain Rykaert Karlheinz Schmidthaus Bruce Schroeder Greg Shah Richard Spurlock Klaus Staedtler Steffi Stein Serge Sterck Eric Traut 8. Copyrights ------------- (C) 2001-2002 InnoTek(R) Systemberatung GmbH www.innotek.de (C) 1996-2002 Connectix Inc. www.connectix.com 2002-10-15