Since running VMware Workstation 5.5 on my Vista PC with a duo core CPU, I always get this message “Your host’s BIOS does not have valid NUMA information” whenever I start a virtual machine and my host system is blocked for some minutes. The message also refers to two knowledge base articles (document ID 938 and 1236). Since I know that many of my readers are moving to Vista with duo core CPUs these days, I will post the solution to the problem here.

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Microsoft’s official recommendations are 512MB for a “Vista capable PC” and 1GB for “Vista Premium Ready“. Of course, nobody takes such recommendations seriously, anymore. Steve Row, a Microsoft employee, just posted an interesting comparison with the memory requirements for Windows XP.

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James O’Neill summarized the different ways to backup Vista: imageX, CompletePC Backup, Vista Restore Points, Vista Backup, and Folder Redirection.

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Before I was just upset by these concentration destroying UAC pop-ups. When I played these past days with the OS Deployment Feature Pack of SMS 2003 SP2 and Vista, I encountered a new “nice feature” of UAC. If you are a sysop, you’ll probably have a lot of fun with this in the near future.

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Microsoft SMS 2003 SP2 (Systems Management Server) only offers limited support for Windows Vista. You have to wait for SMS 2003 SP3 in order to use all its features. So far, I didn’t find an official Microsoft document with more details about the supported features. I am currently playing with SMS 2003 SP2 to find out how compatible it is with Vista, and if it can be used to manage Vista.

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Recently I read that one of the new features of VMware Workstation 5.5.3 is that it has better support for Windows Vista. It is still experimental, though. Since I am testing Vista mostly in a virtual environment, I was curious to know, if all the problems I had with Vista RC1 and RC2 on VMware Workstation still persist.

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Microsoft published the Windows Vista Product Guide with 316 pages. Many of the information there can also be found on the Web, but with this guide, you will have it all in one document. I just skimmed over it and found some information I didn’t see before anywhere else.

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Today, I started preparations on my own desktop for Windows Vista. I know, I am late. Windows Vista RTM has been available on MSDN for a couple of days already. And I know that many admins have moved to Vista RC2 sometime ago. My post about the Adminpak for Windows Vista is the most often accessed article on this blog for some time now. Obviously, many sysops could not wait until the final version of Vista is out.

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Windows XP SP3 will be delayed to 2008 and Windows Server 2003 SP2 to Q1 2007. So both service packs will be at least half a year late. There is much speculation in the blogosphere [1] [2] about Microsoft’s reasons. Some say that they want to force customers to move to Vista; others say the Windows team is concentrating on Vista and Longhorn Server. I think the latter view is closer to the truth. This might be an understatement, though.

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It seems that this is going to become my hobby. Wouldn’t it be boring if it were possible to install Vista by just running the setup? On Saturday I complained that Vista RC2 can’t be installed on VMware Workstation because the Vista setup claimed that there is a CD/DVD driver missing. One of my readers mailed me the solution to this new problem. Thanks!

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