Windows 7 - Q&A for Desktop Virtualization

The term ‘Desktop Virtualization’ covers a multitude of technologies from application virtualization (insulating applications from the behaviour of other applications) to running incompatible applications in a separate OS virtualized on the client computer to moving the users OS to a VM in the data centre.

You can out find more at the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) Microsoft TechNet site.

Please leave any questions or comments you have on Desktop Virtualization below, this should prove an interesting conversation!

Hi all,

I'm Matt McSpirit (a.k.a Virtualboy) and I'm also monitoring the thread, so feel free to fire your questions over!

My system image backups (current Windows 7 Ultimate system) are 220+ GB. Virtual PC has a 127 GB size limit to vhd's. Any possibilities to mount a system image vhd as a second hard disk to an existing virtual machine, to be able able to extract files, or is mounting it in disk management only option when image file is over 127 GB?

Kari

Hi Kari,

The 127GB size limit is on the Virtual IDE controller, and on Windows Virtual PC, there isn't an alternative to this (i.e. Virtual SCSI), so the easiest way of extracting files from the System Image Backups would be to mount that VHD in Disk Management, native to Windows 7.

Hope that helps!
Matt

Thanks, Matt. Have to edit my tutorial to add this piece of information.

Kari

No probs Kari - tutorial looks great, and very detailed. This is something users will find very useful. Maybe a few screens on how to mount in Disk Management would also be useful for your readers?

Keep up the great work!
Matt

Please go ahead if you have any questions about Desktop Virt, including MDOP. I came from the original Softricity team so I can answer lots of App-V questions.

Brink has already made an excellent tut about that(System Image - Extract Files Using Disk Management). I just added a link to that tut.

Kari

Awesome - all valuable stuff for users!
Thanks!

That's a great list. I've used the Disk Manager to compact my VHDs in a much easier method than the old VPC way.