I've been using Virtual PC a lot lately. Since I've been installing and configuring Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation Server beta 3, I've needed an isolated environment because those installs/uninstalls aren't really stable. Virtual PCs and a couple of GB of RAM are the only way to go. They are especially cool because of their ability to attach to an ISO file as a virtual CD drive. That allows you to install directly from CD/DVD images downloaded from MSDN.
I had some time to myself today and thought I'd try out Windows Vista(tm) Beta 2 and see how it works. Immediately I ran into a problem with Virtual PC not attaching to ISO images larger than 2.2GB (Virtual Server doesn't have this limitation). At the same time, while looking for 64bit drivers for my desktop machine, I found mention of a utility to create a virtual CD drive from ISOs in your host OS, just like Virtual PC does. PlanetAMD64 (you have to register and sign-on to find anything) had a link to a Virtual CD utility under Win64. Very cool.
So, I Googled for a virtual CD utility and found this unsupported "Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP" from Microsoft, which attaches an ISO as a CD under Windows XP x86. It works fine and Virtual PC has no problem attaching to the new "physical" CD drive virtualized by the host OS. Windows Vista installation is now under way. So, it's time to go work out while it does its thing.
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