Prev: Best quality motherboards for AMD
Next: comment on Toshibe Satallite laptop recovery
From: Puddin' Man on 2 Apr 2010 00:03

On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:08:25 -0400, Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote:

>Puddin' Man wrote:
>> On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:48:33 -0400, Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Puddin' Man wrote:
>>>
>>>> Suppose I build a desktop with current hardware (i.e., i5, H55 chipset) and no
>>>> W2k video driver, load XP64 as host, add VPC2007, and install W2k as guest.
>>>> W2k will *think* it is doing S3 or similar video?. What would you expect it to
>>>> look like?
>>> Well, it looks like the Win2K desktop :-) The difference between running on top of
>>> an S3 emulation and running on a real GTX285, is one is good for games, and the other
>>> one isn't. If you wanted to run Microsoft Office, I would think the S3 emulation
>>> will be fine for that.
>>
>> Forget gaming for a moment. I'll try again.
>>
>> 1.) You build a desktop with current Intel hardware (i.e., i5 or i7) and a
>> decent video device (maybe $80). You load XP64 as host and thoroughly test
>> the system. Video performance is per your expectation: you are a happy
>> camper.
>>
>> 2.) You add VPC2007, and install W2k as guest, and thoroughly test
>> the W2k system (no games: any/all manner of Email, browser/Flash, editor, usenet
>> client, Adobe reader, other programs, etc etc).
>>
>> What is your rational expectation for video performance in 2.)?
>>
>
>Flash 10 movie playback. Flawless. But refuses to go full screen. Only
>the windowed playback mode works. And CPU usage is about 2% in that mode.
>
>Quicktime Player 7.1.6 (for Win2K). Pretty close to Flash 10 performance,
>but with the occasional glitch when there was a lot of motion in the source
>(H.264). About 25% CPU usage in Task Manager.
>
>Cyberlink PowerDVD is not quite as good. A little bit out of sync on audio. A
>hint of judder in playback, not as smooth as I've seen otherwise. I was playing
>a movie from the DVD drive. I expect the code in there, has all sorts of
>tricks that rely on real hardware, and the emulated hardware in the
>environment isn't very exciting.
>
>VLC Player. Doesn't work worth a damn.

Ouch!

>The experience varies a lot, with the kind of software being used.

I feared as much.

> From my perspective, it's pretty good. But I've seen the attempts
>that weren't quite as smooth and powerful, like SoftWindows many
>years ago. With the earlier virtual environments, you had to be a
>lot more patient.
>
>I keep a copy of Acrobat Reader 9 installed in Win2K, and for documents
>that my other copy of Reader won't read,

Your XP reader won't read certain doc's?

>I just open the Win2K session and
>read the documents there. I don't really like the interface on the
>Acrobat Reader 9, so it's installed where it won't bother me quite as much
>(only used if absolutely necessary).

Say, for purpose of this discussion, that your XP (host) video performance,
on a scale of 1-10, is a 9. How would you rate video performance of your
W2k guest?

You run Firefox only on XP?

I, like many, view emulation as an iffy, iffy proposition. Still, it seems
likely I will have to fiddle some of it sooner or later. Do you know of a good
forum that is specific to vitualization?

Had hoped to, maybe/perhaps/if-the-moon-is-in-the-right-position, continue
to run W2k on a daily basis whilst working with a newer MS OS, all on
current gen HW. It now looks difficult to impossible.

Thx,
P

"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."

From: Paul on 2 Apr 2010 02:41
Puddin' Man wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:08:25 -0400, Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote:

>> Flash 10 movie playback. Flawless. But refuses to go full screen. Only
>> the windowed playback mode works. And CPU usage is about 2% in that mode.
>>
>> Quicktime Player 7.1.6 (for Win2K). Pretty close to Flash 10 performance,
>> but with the occasional glitch when there was a lot of motion in the source
>> (H.264). About 25% CPU usage in Task Manager.
>>
>> Cyberlink PowerDVD is not quite as good. A little bit out of sync on audio. A
>> hint of judder in playback, not as smooth as I've seen otherwise. I was playing
>> a movie from the DVD drive. I expect the code in there, has all sorts of
>> tricks that rely on real hardware, and the emulated hardware in the
>> environment isn't very exciting.
>>
>> VLC Player. Doesn't work worth a damn.
>
> Ouch!
>
>> The experience varies a lot, with the kind of software being used.
>
> I feared as much.
>
>> From my perspective, it's pretty good. But I've seen the attempts
>> that weren't quite as smooth and powerful, like SoftWindows many
>> years ago. With the earlier virtual environments, you had to be a
>> lot more patient.
>>
>> I keep a copy of Acrobat Reader 9 installed in Win2K, and for documents
>> that my other copy of Reader won't read,
>
> Your XP reader won't read certain doc's?

The version of PDF standard present in some Intel documentation,
requires Acrobat 9. Anyone who has used Distiller to make PDFs,
knows you have a setting to control what PDF standard is used,
and when I've used Distiller, I always used an older standard
to ensure my audience could read the documents. Apparently, Intel
doesn't feel the same way about it.

In fact, I marvel at the number of documents I've read off the
net, where it is obvious the people using Distiller, don't even
know there are preferences in there, and they can be set in a way
appropriate for the job. For example, I spent 10 minutes with
my copy of Distiller, ensuring I was using an image compression
mode that preserved image quality. How many documents have
you seen, where some dope provides pictures of install screens
or something, where all the text is so blurry as to be unreadable ?
I hate displays of stupidity like that. It doesn't take that long,
to tune the tool for the job. I mean, if you want to show screenshots
of an install screen, and all it has is text on the screen, you
could always just put text in the document, rather than the insulting
blurry picture.

>
> You run Firefox only on XP?

If I have Firefox in XP, and in the virtual W2K, it doesn't make sense
to be using them both at the same time. I could, but I confuse easily :-)
I use Firefox in W2K, if I happen to be doing a download that is going
to be used in the virtual W2K environment. I probably wouldn't surf
in there though (because if I did, I'd need to back up my bookmarks
on occasion).

I tend to access my segregated tools in W2K. Some of the tools are
segregated, because they may adversely affect XP (like the movie tools
that had CODEC packs or the like). Or if I have a piece of software with
no pedigree, where I don't know what it is going to do, I might try it
in virtual W2K first. If it trashes the environment, I just reach for
the "clean copy" of the virtual disk, and start over again. (VPC2007
has an "undo" feature, but I'm not interested in it.) My usage
pattern is planned with trashing the virtual setup in mind - I don't
do things in the virtual setup with the idea that they're permanent.
It's so I can use crappy software, and not think twice about having to
throw the environment away.

>
> I, like many, view emulation as an iffy, iffy proposition. Still, it seems
> likely I will have to fiddle some of it sooner or later. Do you know of a good
> forum that is specific to vitualization?
>
> Had hoped to, maybe/perhaps/if-the-moon-is-in-the-right-position, continue
> to run W2k on a daily basis whilst working with a newer MS OS, all on
> current gen HW. It now looks difficult to impossible.
>
> Thx,
> P

No forums come to mind, for VPC2007.

If you're thinking the virtualized environment is perfect, it is not. But
if you were to compare it to the history of virtualized environments, it is
pretty damned good. At one time, it was barely usable, because it was so
slow. Now, the speed is tolerable to good.

My purpose in pointing out my usage pattern to you, is to emphasize that its
purpose is to fill in "functional holes" in an environment. If Office wouldn't
run in Windows 7, and you used Office all day, then perhaps you would spend the
entire day using the virtual window. If your Office usage is casual, such as reading
a document sent as an email attachment, then you might not be in there very much.
I haven't tested Office tools in there, but I see no reason to suspect they'd
suck, since they're typically not exercising graphics like other applications do.

I can give examples of functional failures. When I use VPC2007 for simple things,
I've never had a problem. But one day, I decided to run movie rendering in there,
and I turned on a feature like file sharing, which accesses my real disk, instead
of writing to the emulated disk (the emulated disk was set up with a 15GB limit).
I processed about 130GB of data, and somewhere along the way, VPC2007 managed to
corrupt NTFS on the real disk. There was no data loss, but CHKDSK would no longer
pass the real disk (and it couldn't fix it either). To fix it, I copied all the data
off the damaged disk, fixed up the disk, and copied the data back. All I can say
about the experience, is I haven't tried it again. I can't remember the last time
I had a CHKDSK problem in normal system usage.

I've never had problems with information stored on the VHD (virtual) disks. So
that part seems OK, and is the mode of operation you've be most likely to be using.
Since you can drag and drop files between windows, there isn't a reason for you
to be using the file sharing thing I was trying out. And there were no hardware
style events (like a power failure, or abend of the VPC2007 session) to account
for the NTFS problem. The patch level of my Win2K copy, was at SP4 plus "rollup #1",
so it was patched reasonably well. It was probably missing a few security updates.

VPC2007 is not the only virtualization environment out there. There are
others, but I haven't been sufficiently motivated to test them.

Paul
From: Puddin' Man on 5 Apr 2010 17:59
On Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:41:03 -0400, Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote:

>Puddin' Man wrote:
>> On Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:08:25 -0400, Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote:
>
...
>>>
>>> I keep a copy of Acrobat Reader 9 installed in Win2K, and for documents
>>> that my other copy of Reader won't read,
>>
>> Your XP reader won't read certain doc's?
>
>The version of PDF standard present in some Intel documentation,
>requires Acrobat 9. Anyone who has used Distiller to make PDFs,
>knows you have a setting to control what PDF standard is used,
>and when I've used Distiller, I always used an older standard
>to ensure my audience could read the documents. Apparently, Intel
>doesn't feel the same way about it.
>
>In fact, I marvel at the number of documents I've read off the
>net, where it is obvious the people using Distiller, don't even
>know there are preferences in there, and they can be set in a way
>appropriate for the job. For example, I spent 10 minutes with
>my copy of Distiller, ensuring I was using an image compression
>mode that preserved image quality. How many documents have
>you seen, where some dope provides pictures of install screens
>or something, where all the text is so blurry as to be unreadable ?

Many, many, and many.

>I hate displays of stupidity like that. It doesn't take that long,
>to tune the tool for the job. I mean, if you want to show screenshots
>of an install screen, and all it has is text on the screen, you
>could always just put text in the document, rather than the insulting
>blurry picture.

It's all in their priorities. If their priority is to rip-and-tear ...

>> You run Firefox only on XP?
>
>If I have Firefox in XP, and in the virtual W2K, it doesn't make sense
>to be using them both at the same time. I could, but I confuse easily :-)
>I use Firefox in W2K, if I happen to be doing a download that is going
>to be used in the virtual W2K environment. I probably wouldn't surf
>in there though (because if I did, I'd need to back up my bookmarks
>on occasion).

Who said anything about "both at the same time". I was just wondering
how W2k FF "looked", but if you only use it for downloads ...

>I tend to access my segregated tools in W2K. Some of the tools are
>segregated, because they may adversely affect XP (like the movie tools
>that had CODEC packs or the like). Or if I have a piece of software with
>no pedigree, where I don't know what it is going to do, I might try it
>in virtual W2K first. If it trashes the environment, I just reach for
>the "clean copy" of the virtual disk, and start over again. (VPC2007
>has an "undo" feature, but I'm not interested in it.) My usage
>pattern is planned with trashing the virtual setup in mind - I don't
>do things in the virtual setup with the idea that they're permanent.
>It's so I can use crappy software, and not think twice about having to
>throw the environment away.

Well, your VPC2007 guests are "Test" environments for my purposes.

>> I, like many, view emulation as an iffy, iffy proposition. Still, it seems
>> likely I will have to fiddle some of it sooner or later. Do you know of a good
>> forum that is specific to vitualization?
>>
>> Had hoped to, maybe/perhaps/if-the-moon-is-in-the-right-position, continue
>> to run W2k on a daily basis whilst working with a newer MS OS, all on
>> current gen HW. It now looks difficult to impossible.
>>
>> Thx,
>> P
>
>No forums come to mind, for VPC2007.
>
>If you're thinking the virtualized environment is perfect, it is not. But
>if you were to compare it to the history of virtualized environments, it is
>pretty damned good. At one time, it was barely usable, because it was so
>slow. Now, the speed is tolerable to good.
>
>My purpose in pointing out my usage pattern to you, is to emphasize that its
>purpose is to fill in "functional holes" in an environment. If Office wouldn't
>run in Windows 7, and you used Office all day, then perhaps you would spend the
>entire day using the virtual window. If your Office usage is casual, such as reading
>a document sent as an email attachment, then you might not be in there very much.
>I haven't tested Office tools in there, but I see no reason to suspect they'd
>suck, since they're typically not exercising graphics like other applications do.
>
>I can give examples of functional failures. When I use VPC2007 for simple things,
>I've never had a problem. But one day, I decided to run movie rendering in there,
>and I turned on a feature like file sharing, which accesses my real disk, instead
>of writing to the emulated disk (the emulated disk was set up with a 15GB limit).
>I processed about 130GB of data, and somewhere along the way, VPC2007 managed to
>corrupt NTFS on the real disk. There was no data loss, but CHKDSK would no longer
>pass the real disk (and it couldn't fix it either). To fix it, I copied all the data
>off the damaged disk, fixed up the disk, and copied the data back. All I can say
>about the experience, is I haven't tried it again. I can't remember the last time
>I had a CHKDSK problem in normal system usage.

Pushing the virtual environment too hard, perhaps.

>I've never had problems with information stored on the VHD (virtual) disks. So
>that part seems OK, and is the mode of operation you've be most likely to be using.
>Since you can drag and drop files between windows, there isn't a reason for you
>to be using the file sharing thing I was trying out. And there were no hardware
>style events (like a power failure, or abend of the VPC2007 session) to account
>for the NTFS problem. The patch level of my Win2K copy, was at SP4 plus "rollup #1",
>so it was patched reasonably well. It was probably missing a few security updates.

What W2k install isn't?

>VPC2007 is not the only virtualization environment out there. There are
>others, but I haven't been sufficiently motivated to test them.

Do bare-metal hypervisors employ emulation?

Much thanks for sharing your VPC2007 experience. It is something that I needed to
know about.

I'm still looking for W2k video drivers for current HW. The release notes
for various NVIDIA GeForce devices using the 197.13 driver have stuff like:

Microsoft� Windows� 2000 and Windows XP systems using AMD K7 and K8
processors can hang when an AGP or PCI-E program is used.
. Root Cause
There is a known problem with Microsoft� Windows� 2000 and Windows XP
systems using AMD K7 and K8 CPUs that results in the Microsoft operating system
allocating overlapping 4M cached pages with 4k write-combined pages. This
condition results in undefined behavior and data corruption, and is explicitly
disallowed by the AMD CPU manual.

So, I suppose there is hope of some sort. :-)

Cheers,
P

"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."

From: Puddin' Man on 29 Apr 2010 23:23
On Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:59:53 -0500, Puddin' Man <puddingDOTman(a)gmail.com> wrote:

>So, I suppose there is hope of some sort. :-)
>
> Cheers,
> P

In case anyone is interested in W2k video drivers, I think Nvidia GeForce is
likely the way to go.

As near as I can tell, the GeForce 197.45 driver supports all GeForce video
cards except the current gen (GTX 4xx).

From the 197.45 .inf file:
; NVIDIA Windows 2000/XP (32 bit) Display INF file
; Copyright (c) NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.

From http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_197.45_whql.html:
...
This is a WHQL-certified driver for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, and 300-
series desktop GPUs and ION desktop GPUs.

I haven't personally tested it, but my expectation is that it will work.

P

"Law Without Equity Is No Law At All. It Is A Form Of Jungle Rule."

From: Paul on 29 Apr 2010 23:54
Puddin' Man wrote:
> On Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:59:53 -0500, Puddin' Man <puddingDOTman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> In case anyone is interested in W2k video drivers, I think Nvidia GeForce is
> likely the way to go.
>
> As near as I can tell, the GeForce 197.45 driver supports all GeForce video
> cards except the current gen (GTX 4xx).
>
> From the 197.45 .inf file:
> ; NVIDIA Windows 2000/XP (32 bit) Display INF file
> ; Copyright (c) NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.
>
> From http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_197.45_whql.html:
> ...
> This is a WHQL-certified driver for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, and 300-
> series desktop GPUs and ION desktop GPUs.
>
> I haven't personally tested it, but my expectation is that it will work.
>
> P

I bet that wasn't very easy to find though. Their driver download page
doesn't properly support Win2K.

Paul
First  |  Prev  |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2 3 4
Prev: Best quality motherboards for AMD
Next: comment on Toshibe Satallite laptop recovery