Venu Anuganti Blog

Today on one my home desktop, I deleted the Linux partition under Windows Vista using ‘Disk Management’ where the Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty was installed as a dual boot option as I was running out of space. But when I tried to reboot the system, the system is no longer booting due to corrupted MBR.

So, I have to manually repair the boot loader using Vista setup DVD disk. In the recovery options, when I selected, “Startup repair - Automatically fix problems which are preventing windows from starting”, that did not help. So, I selected Command Prompt option and then ran “BootRec /FixMBR followed by BootRec /FixBoot” and that did rebuild the boot loader.

As we had earlier post that Parallels is not supporting Readyboost on its Windows Vista installation due to USB speed issues. As Boot Camp allows to take advantage of the Readyboost feature as it is a native install, if one is OK with the dual boot that is a better option as the Vista performance experience index scrore using boot camp is 4.6.

But today I thought of experiementing with Vmware fusion to see how it performs when compared to Parallels. But to my surprise, the latest version 1.0b3 (build 43733) is real kool and works by booting to Boot Camp partition ( Parallels does not yet support this for Vista) and takes advantage of Readyboost as well.

Here is the steps what I did in my Intel compatible Macbook Pro:

Install Windows Vista using regular boot camp Install all boot camp drivers and update using Windows update Insert readyboost compatible flash drive and after the test, assign the default size (mine 1.6G out of 2GB) Now reboot to Mac, download and install VMware fusion beta, which is freeely available from VMware. Once its installed, start the VMware fusion and point to pick the Boot Camp partition Configure the VMware (VMware tool bar on top -> Virtual Machine -> Settings) to have right memory (I gave 1.2G to VM and 1 Processor, and rest to default) Disable the debug logs (VMware tool bar on top -> VMware Fusion -> Preferences -> Uncheck Diagnostics) And start the OS, it just starts without any problem Don’t be panic as the OS operates slower than Parallels and it takes time to take mouse clicks and keyboard input. Windows might report missing drivers and etc; do not worry. Now, install VMware tools when the OS is running (VMware tool bar on top -> Virtual Machine -> Install VMware tools ) and once the disk is mounted run setup.exe and install all drivers. After the VMware tools are installed completely; reboot your system. After the reboot, run Windows update to have latest drivers if there are any missing and reboot if asked. Once the system rebooted back, insert your ready boost flash drive and the VMware automatically uses this as readyboost as its already configured on that OS when its in Boot Camp. To confirm whether readyboost works or not, you can open the drive contents and you can see the details like in the right side pictures Now, you can even test ReadyBoost how it works by doing this: Click on the Start button -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Reliability and Performance Monitor In the left menu click on the Performance Monitor under the Monitoring Tools category In the right pane, click on the green + sign () to add new counters. Under available counters, scroll down till you see ReadyBoost Cache and double-click on it to expand this category. Select the ReadyBoost Cache counter that you would like to add by left-clicking on it and then clicking on the Add button. Once you have added all the ReadyBoost Cache counters that you would like to monitor, press the OK button. Now you can see graph with all counters as in the picture below. Open IE browser or any other application to see how it spikes by doing multiple times

Thats all, now I have Windows Vista which can either boot using Boot Camp as natively or through Vmware Fusion and Readyboost works in both ways except that Aero theme will be missing when ran with VM and thats a well known issue in the world of virtualization.

Here is the few missing features when compared to Paralles:

• Coherence is absolutely a needed and lovable feature by everyone in Parallels, which is totally missing in VMWare
• Changing from Full-Screen to regular and regular to full-screen takes some time in VMWare; where is Parallels it is instant and animation is too cool.
• The performance in Vmware is not that optimal compared to Parallels even after installing VMware tools and disabling the debug logs. May be future releases will address this. But not really bad as it works perfect for general development use.
• Overall its good time for us and we have to wait and see who wins in the race..either VMware or Parallels …am neutral at this time.

So far I have seen only Windows blue screen of death; and lately as I started playing with white Apple Mac series, and other day suddenly encountered the death of white screen. And the message is so clear that I must restart my Macbook pro to get the things working by recycling the power, and none of the other peripherals works. Once restarted, as usual like Windows, it will pop up a windows to report the error to Apple as in the screen shots below.

This is yet another post on Mac related topics; and playing a bit to get Windows Vista to run for regular development. After spending lot of time in tweaking the Vista by collecting the information from web, I thought I will have some information posted here, so that I can reuse it later on or can be useful for someone. The tweaks can be used on PC laptop, Mac, Macbook, Macbook Pro or PC desktop as well.

Once you have Windows Vista running in either in your PC, Mac through Boot Camp or through any virtual machine on Mac (Parallels or Vmware, I currently run Vista over Parallels along with Boot Camp), follow these steps:

1. Create a restore point
   First and foremost, before doing any modifications, create restore point, so that in worst case, you can restore back your Windows Vista.

   Start -> Control Panel -> System -> On left side, click on ‘System Protection’ -> Click on ‘Create’ and name it -> Click on create..it takes 5-10 secs to create it.

2. User Account Control:
   Turn off the User Control Unit, so that you don’t get a popup window every time you try to open an application.

   Start -> Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Click on Turn User Account Control On or Off from left pane -> Uncheck ‘Use User Account Control to help protect your computer’

3. Extra Programs:
   Get rid of extra programs, which are never used (atleast majority of people).

   Start -> Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Click on ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ from left pane ->

   It opens a Windows Features dialog, and get uncheck the following programs which are not needed along with other programs that you dont ever use it. If you are not sure what each of this programs are, get a quick look from Wikipedia.

   • Games -> Chess Titans, FreeCell, Hearts, InkBall, Mahjong Titans, Minsweaper, Purble place, Spider Solitaire (by leaving Solitaire as thats the only one I use)
   • .NET Framework -> XPS Viewer
   • Remote Differential Compression
   • Windows Fax and Scan (I never attach a scanner to my laptop)
   • Windows Meeting Space
   • Windows Ultimate Extras

   Once you have unchecked the programs that you dont want, click OK…it will take couple of minutes and leave it aside and once done, it will ask you reboot…don’t do it at this time, as you can do it at the end of all tweaks.

4. Install Free Antivirus:
   This is not a performance enhancer, but worth to have so that the system will not be affected as we will be disabling the builtin security alerts. I installed free AVG Anti Virus Free Edition, which works fine on Vista and does not consume the CPU like others.

5. Windows Sidebar
   Windows Sidebar, which I never wanted to use as I dont have patience to go and download the gadgets and keep them up2date and not worth the resources that this sidebar uses.

   Start -> Control Panel -> Windows Sidebar Properties -> Uncheck ‘Start Sidebar when Windows starts’

6. Security Notifications:
   Get rid of the security notifications, which are not needed as you may have other tools to monitor.

   Start -> Control Panel -> Security Center -> On left side click on ‘Change the way Security Center alerts me’ -> choose Don’t notify me and don’t display the icon

7. Menu Items
   Customize the list of items to be displayed on menu

   Right click on Windows Taskbar, select on properties and select the following and uncheck rest

   • Lock the taskbar
   • Keep the taskbar on top of other windows
   • Show Quicklaunch
   • Show window previews (not needed, but I needed it)

   and then select ‘Start Menu’ tab and click on customize it and select the things how you wanted it and ensure to select ‘run command’ and click apply.

8. Services
   Get rid of unwanted services which are not needed in your laptops and or in modern computers.

   Start -> Run (Win + R ) -> type msconfig and hit enter -> navigate to ’services’ tab (you can even do this with services.msc)

   and uncheck the following services:

   • Bluetooth support service (I dont use this on parallels)
   • Computer Browser
   • DFS Replication
   • Distributed Link Tracking Client
   • IP Helper
   • IPSec policy agent
   • KtmRm for Distributed trasaction coordinator
   • Offline files
   • Remote registry (no point for a laptop)
   • Secondary Logon ( am the only one on laptop)
   • Security Center
   • SSDP Discovery
   • Tablet PC Input Service
   • Terminal Services ( I dont need terminal service server on laptop)
   • Terminal Services Configuration
   • Terminal Services UserMode port redirector
   • Windows Defender ( I manage it myself, I dont want to this keep running and taking my CPU)
   • Windows Error Reporting Service (I care when system crashes with blue screen)
   • Windows Media Center (all 3 services, I dont need them in virtual machine)
     

   and click Apply, and do not restart at this time as some more to go.

9. Startup Applications:
   Get rid of unwanted startup applications which you dont want to see them running.

   Start -> Run (Win + R) -> type msconfig and hit enter -> navigate to ’startup’ tab and uncheck any unnecessary programs (like adobe, Windows Defender) and click apply..do not restart yet

10. Menu display
    Speed up the way the menu items are displayed with this registry tweak

    Start -> Run (Win + R) -> type regedit and enter -> and nagivate to

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop

    Find and right click on ‘MenuShowDelay’ and select modify (or double click). Set the value from 400 to 100.

11. Menu Search
    Start -> Run (Win + R) -> type regedit and enter -> and nagivate to

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Advanced

    Find and right click on Start_SearchFiles and select Modify (or double click). Set the Value from 2 to 0.

12. ReadyBoost
    Even though its talked at the end; but its one of the performance enhancement thats introduced in Vista to take advantage of flash drives which has good memory. For more information on how to select and configure it, check Microsoft website and my earlier post here.

Now, finally you restart your system; and you can see that the system operates much better then how it was earlier.

After trying lot of free tools to backup my MacBook Pro settings, selected applications, user and system settings; nothing found interesting. But today I found iBackup as the best one so far whatever the tools I tried. Which is a nice free GUI tool, offers to backup selected user and system settings along with the applications and utilities; which is what is needed when I needed restore back the OS because I do not care about reinstalling the Mac OS X back, but more concerned about the settings and core files.

It took me about 20 minutes to copy all files (~1.4GB) to my other backup Windows drive (smb mounted). So, even if I break the OS, I can get my settings back by restoring the files using iBackup. Now, I can schedule the backup process for every week.

I am going to get another MacBook Pro in couple of days…..but am not buying this time…then how ? Well, there is a small company called Yahoo! for which I started working recently; and they are going to upgrade my HP nc6220 laptop PC to Intel Based MacBook Pro. So, time for me to backup all files so that I can import them back to Mac once I have it..

Badly last week I partitioned my mac disk to two partitions, one serves as the startup partition for Mac OS X and another one for backup and parallels images. I did this to make sure I can have the backup as I started playing a bit with Mac…and you never know what happens.

Currently my second partition has Windows Vista parallels images, which I use it all the time. Today I decided to install (again ?) Boot Camp and install Windows Vista on top of that, so that Parallels and Boot Camp can share the same file space, so that I can either dual boot using Boot Camp or run along side using Parallels using the same image files. But Boot Camp 1.2 immediately reported the error “the startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition” upon opening.

Now, its time for me to merge the partitions and I need to find a tool to do this without actually wiping the whole disk as the default ‘disk utilities‘ does wipe everything in order to merge the partitions.