Virtual PC Guest OS Performance Tips Part 3 of 3 --- Boot VPC's in a Minute!!!!
So here’s the trick to boot your VPC’s in a minute, for VPCs you can set them up so that you can close them and when you restart you are resumed to with a save state. I did have one initial problem with using a variable in the original batch file(%0), but I hard coded the paths I got it working:
- Setup your VPC as normal with undo disks disabled.
- Shutdown the VPC.
- Enable undo disks.
- Start the VPC, and get everything to the state you want to begin your demo – apps running etc.
- Close the VPC, select to save state and save changes and commit changes to the virtual disk.
- Edit the VPC settings, and change the close setting to automatically close without a message and turn off and delete changes.
- Create a sub folder under the VPC folder called “Resume”.
- Copy the .VMC and the .VSV file from the VPC folder into the “Resume” folder.
- Create a batch file in the VPC folder:
Original batch file (I could not get the %0 to work) https://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;318689
@echo off
robocopy "%0\..\Resume" "%0\.." /r:0
start "VPC" /min "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual PC\Virtual PC.exe"
start "Sandbox DC" "%0\..\whatever.vmc"
The one I got to work (just hard coded the paths to the files)
@echo off
robocopy "C:\Documents and Settings\mhester\My Documents\My Virtual Machines\test\Resume" "C:\Documents and Settings\mhester\My Documents\My Virtual Machines\test" /r:0
start "VPC" /min "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual PC\Virtual PC.exe"
start "London DCex" "C:\Documents and Settings\mhester\My Documents\My Virtual Machines\test\test.vmc"
(Obviously, change whatever.vmc to whatever your VPC is called – and you’ll need robocopy.exe somewhere on your path)
You can download robocopy with the windows resource kit utilities: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&DisplayLang=en
- Now you can start your VPC by running the batch file, and it will start in seconds to the point that you created the save state.
So give it a try and let me know what you think!!!!