VMWare problems on Vista

I need to run VMware on my notebook (which is installed with Vista).

I installed VMWare Server 1.0.6 (which is running perfectly on my desktop – window XP). The installation on vista is OK but Once start it, it turns out blue screen. It is really get me mad.

After some “googlging”, the answer is the avasts – a virus scan software (Arr…??).

Seems It has some conflict with the vmware,(but I don’t observed in my PC which is XP??)
The solution is unstall it.  OK…..

And then, vmware can start. But everytime it startup, the vista is hang up from 30 sec to 2 mins. It is really troublesome. Especially, I’m frequently need to up and down vm for different testing.

And the vista getting longer to startup (seems it is vm authroizatoin module doing some
stupid thing at startup)

After another “goolging”, people said version 2.0 better support on vista. But interesting, it never mentioned in their website.

So, I unstall the 1.0.6 and reinstall 2.0. This time, it run better.

But I really don’t like the new web interface in vmware 2.0

the new web interface requires install a plugin to start the vmware console but it is not support my favourte browser – firefox 3.0. No solution, only thing I can do is giveup and using IE.

finally, I can get my vmware working.

Running Vista on X61s (Part 1)

Running on vista is scary journey. UI is not very responsible for some time, annoying UAC, and I don’t feel any reason why they design the UI like this.

So my first step is create the backup disk, just in case if I fail when restore to XP and install ubuntu.

And then I spent 1/2 hour to find out how to create the recovery disk. It has not clear described in help. As usual, find the answer using google.

> Go to “All Programs > ThinkVantage > Create Rescue and Recovery Media. Then select your desirable type of rescue media. To create recovery CD, check the “Create a set of Product Recovery Discs now” and then click “OK” to start the creation process.

(copied from :http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/01/18/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-recovery-cd )

After created the recovery disk, I feed I have a great safely net around why don’t give vista sometime (in worst case, just restore to XP as my originally plan)

What I do is:

> install Office 2003 ( Office 2007 is just a joke, I’ve absolutely no clue why MS build the office suite like this, even Open Office is better )

> install firefox 2.0

> install jZip (the build in decompress is very very ….. slow, it takes hours for few minutes task)

> install Scite (my second favorite editor, the 1st is UltraEditor)

> turn off Indexing

> turn off UAC

> install Avast

Now, at least, I can do some document or drafting work on this.

My next steps is install “vmware server”, hope it won’t let my down.

( heard some rumor on very bad experience on Vista SP1, I’m not dare to try it)

Lenovo X61s notebook

Finally, my long journey for a new notebook is ended and the winner is lenovo X61s (B67).

It has one 160G hard disk, 3G physical memory, finger print, L7700 (1.8GHz). And it costs $12,000 HKD (and bundled with free USB DVD writer as well). I am very satisfy with the hardware.

The only downside, it is pre-installed with Vista business. Frankly speaking, the Vista is not that difficult to use. However, it is quite slow in compare with XP. You cannot feel you’re using the latest CPU with 3G of memory.

Obvious solution is install another OS. I’ve two options:

a) downgrade to window XP – or -

b) install ubuntu (8.04 is coming soon)

But before that, I must backup the Hidden partition and every first.