VMWare free player won’t boot from the ISO I just downloaded (from MSDN). It’s set to boot from CD which is mapped to the ISO.

Ideas?

You can do it, because I’m pretty sure I’ve done it before, but I can’t remember if there were any particular hoops that needed jumping through…

Sorry that’s not particularly helpful.

You could always ask on SuperUser (StackOverflow site)

Try VirtualBox instead?

Yep sure I’ve done it on the Virtual Box stuff maybe even an MS download/vhd still there

Just downloaded a 64bit XP Pro ISO and installed it in VirtualBox, it’s running windows setup now.

Pfft. Downloaded the wrong thing.

It’s been that kind of day.

Dusted off my Lego Mindstorms kit from about 2004. The CD it came with needs Windows 98..! Couldn’t get that, but apparently it can be made to work with XP.

I can probably sort you out with a legit W98SE ISO if you need (I’ve got the original CD somewhere which I can rip).

Did you download a non-booting XP ISO then? Seem to remember that some select agreement images did this.

Once you get the right thing then you’ll have to run the app in comparability mode (r/click the Exe and selects>Troubleshoot Compatability) once you’ve run through the wizard you get some extra features on the file properties that allow you to run it in 98/NT/W2000 emulations. Have you tried this in W7 / W10?

Edit: ah hang on you’ve got vmplayer not vmworkstation? You need an image of xp, not the installer then? Thought about installing hyperv?

I’d swear we have all been here before and I explain all about Vagrant and how to use the images of XP at http://blog.syntaxc4.net/post/2014/09/03/windows-boxes-for-vagrant-courtesy-of-modern-ie.aspx

Rachel (amazed people still use VMs without Vagrant tbh)

The XP/IE6 VHD still exists at MS!!
http://www.askvg.com/download-free-windows-xp-vista-and-windows-7-vhd-image-files-for-microsoft-virtual-pc/
http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/7/2/B72085AE-0F04-4C6F-9182-BF1EE90F5273/Windows_XP_IE6.exe

I’d swear we have all been here before

Yes, we have.. but in this case, that’s hugely overkill 🙂

Problem was I downloaded the SP3 CD image, not Win XP AND SP3 together….

*slow handclap*

(I categorically deny ever doing the same thing, not me, no sirree bob…)

Yes, we have.. but in this case, that’s hugely overkill

If you say so

vagrant box add winnxp http://aka.ms/ie8.xp.vagrant
vagrant init winxp
vagrant up

(see http://www.vagrantbox.es)

🙄

Rachel

Vagrant looks interesting Rachel thanks.

Typically we control our Development VMs by having a golden VM that someone sets up with all the right software, licenses, IDEs, file shares, device drivers, yadda yadda.

Then we just export the OVA file from VirtualBox and version it.
Any developer can then import that file to have a fresh Development VM ready to go.

Not sure Vagrant would gain us much in that respect, but it could be useful for other tasks.

Graham – yeah, it’s essentially a more maintainable version of the same thing as you are doing. Essentially, the VagrantFile (config file for a vagrant vm) describes where to get the box and what to do with it, including what networks to setup etc etc. It also allows various methods of “provisioning” the box – the most obvious being Ansible.

The advantage is the config is text and, therefore, maintainable via git etc. Want next version of X? Just increase the version number of that.

So, my current projects git repo includes the VagrantFile and ansible config that describes exactly how I want my dev environment. When I rebuilt my Mac recently, all I need to do was install vagrant & virtualbox, clone the git repo, type vagrant up, wait a bit and my entire dev environment was back again. Web server, database, search server, fake email server etc etc

Rachel

Ok, I’m intrigued.

I maintain a development VMware cluster. Engineers can request, say, a Windows Server 2008 R2 VM, and I’ll spin it up much like Graham does from a sysprepped “golden sample” VM template. If someone wants something we’ve not used before I have to grab the .ISO from MSDN (assuming Windows), install it to a VM, spend a metric fortnight Windows Updating it and then reseal it as a new template.

What does Vagrant give me over this? Where’s it getting the images from? Do you build a massive repository of base OS images and then just go “I’ll have that one”? How does it deal with stuff you don’t have locally?

Public repositories not much use for work stuff though in many environments.

I don’t think it needs to be a public repo molgrips. It looks like you can point it at any URL, including internal ones.

(which is good because there is no way a public VM image would get past our SOUP regulations or security)

there is no way a public VM image would get past our SOUP regulations

You’d get into a spot of brother?

😆

SOUP = Software Of Unknown Provenance.

Basically when you are doing safety critical software the regulators get a bit jumpy about you saying “Oh it’s just something I downloaded off the net” 😀

True – vagrant will happily work with images from any source. To allow easier automated build and provisioning, they have to be “prepared” for use by vagrant. Remember though, that any of the provisioning done post copy/create of the local image is done via the build tool of your choice – that could be that MS thing I can never quite remember – SSIS? Is that right?

I tend to use Ansible because there are lots of people far better at devops than I will ever be publishing their work. Makes my life easier to re-use 😀

Obviously, there are advantages in a tool that will happily work cross-platform, too. Even Windows 😉

Rachel

Cougar, have you looked at VM orchestration software like OneCloud ? It sits in front of ESXi, AWS or azure and provides a self service front end so you can choose “build me 10 environments, each with a dc, an exchange box, a sql server, off you go”

The clever bit is that it doesn’t need templates for each role. It clones a vmdk then cycles through a pile of commands to customise each clone and install the appropriate software.

I’ve also done similar things with Skytap but the end to end process wasn’t as slick.