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Incompatible programs



 
 
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  #1  
Old November 8th 14, 12:09 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Bob Henson[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 695
Default Incompatible programs

Might it be a good idea to post details of programs proving incompatible
with Windows 10 on the grounds that it may help others to avoid problems?

I installed the latest version (2015.10.0.2206) of Avast! antivirus in
build 9860 yesterday - running in a VM. I ran quick scan, which worked
OK. Then got an odd pop up telling me that rundll32.exe had problems, so
I went to their forum to check the false positive where it was the
general opinion that it was not installable. I opened my big mouth and
said I had just installed it OK and it was running. Shortly thereafter I
was proved totally wrong when all Hell broke loose. Explorer.exe seemed
to have disappeared, error messages popped up all over, and I could not
longer close down Windows 10, nor could I close the VM and get back into
my normal system. I had to force a shutdown with the power switch
(fortunately doing no harm to my Windows 7 system) rerun Windows 10,
download the Avast! removal tool before things seized up, reboot into
safe mode and run it, and finally do a complete system refresh to get
Windows 10 to run again - so much damage had been done, that it was the
only way to fix it.

If you're still with me after all that rambling - the message is don't
try to install Avast!


--
Bob Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Ads
  #2  
Old November 8th 14, 02:25 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
philo [_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 984
Default Incompatible programs

On 11/08/2014 05:09 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
Might it be a good idea to post details of programs proving incompatible
with Windows 10 on the grounds that it may help others to avoid problems?

I installed the latest version (2015.10.0.2206) of Avast! antivirus in
build 9860 yesterday - running in a VM. I ran quick scan, which worked
OK. Then got an odd pop up telling me that rundll32.exe had problems, so
I went to their forum to check the false positive where it was the


snip

The nice thing about using a Virtual Machine is that you can simply make
a copy of the image and experiment all you want. If you break something
you can get back to your original installation in just a minute.


  #3  
Old November 8th 14, 02:49 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Bob Henson[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 695
Default Incompatible programs

On 08/11/2014 1:25 PM, philo wrote:
On 11/08/2014 05:09 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
Might it be a good idea to post details of programs proving incompatible
with Windows 10 on the grounds that it may help others to avoid problems?

I installed the latest version (2015.10.0.2206) of Avast! antivirus in
build 9860 yesterday - running in a VM. I ran quick scan, which worked
OK. Then got an odd pop up telling me that rundll32.exe had problems, so
I went to their forum to check the false positive where it was the


snip

The nice thing about using a Virtual Machine is that you can simply make
a copy of the image and experiment all you want. If you break something
you can get back to your original installation in just a minute.



I hadn't done that - I didn't think I was doing anything that drastic. I
won't get caught again :-(

--
Bob Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK

Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
  #4  
Old November 8th 14, 03:04 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Bob Henson[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 695
Default Incompatible programs

On 08/11/2014 1:25 PM, philo wrote:
On 11/08/2014 05:09 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
Might it be a good idea to post details of programs proving incompatible
with Windows 10 on the grounds that it may help others to avoid problems?

I installed the latest version (2015.10.0.2206) of Avast! antivirus in
build 9860 yesterday - running in a VM. I ran quick scan, which worked
OK. Then got an odd pop up telling me that rundll32.exe had problems, so
I went to their forum to check the false positive where it was the


snip

The nice thing about using a Virtual Machine is that you can simply make
a copy of the image and experiment all you want. If you break something
you can get back to your original installation in just a minute.



Hmm, it would appear I can't do that with the VM player - I have to fork
out £160 quid for the paid version.

--
Bob Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
  #5  
Old November 8th 14, 03:29 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Jeff Gaines[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 86
Default Incompatible programs

On 08/11/2014 in message Bob Henson
wrote:

Hmm, it would appear I can't do that with the VM player - I have to fork
out £160 quid for the paid version.


Bob

How about VirtualBox:
https://www.virtualbox.org/

It's a Yorkshireman's favourite price :-)

--
Jeff Gaines Wiltshire UK
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who do binary and those
who don't.
  #6  
Old November 8th 14, 03:39 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Bob Henson[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 695
Default Incompatible programs

On 08/11/2014 2:29 PM, Jeff Gaines wrote:
On 08/11/2014 in message Bob Henson
wrote:

Hmm, it would appear I can't do that with the VM player - I have to fork
out £160 quid for the paid version.


Bob

How about VirtualBox:
https://www.virtualbox.org/

It's a Yorkshireman's favourite price :-)


I used to use that, Jeff, but I had some problems with a new version
which persistently failed/locked up on here, so I switched to VMware,
which is much better and easier to use. However, the free version is a
cut down version, and doesn't have many of the more complex functions. I
only run test systems on it, so it's no big deal if everything goes
thingies up like Windows 10 did, but a quicker restart would have been
nice in this case.

--
Bob Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK

Yes, a second honeymoon would be a good idea, dear. With whom?
  #7  
Old November 8th 14, 04:06 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
philo [_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 984
Default Incompatible programs

On 11/08/2014 08:39 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 08/11/2014 2:29 PM, Jeff Gaines wrote:
On 08/11/2014 in message Bob Henson
wrote:

Hmm, it would appear I can't do that with the VM player - I have to fork
out £160 quid for the paid version.



Why not just manually make a copy of it ?


How can it not be possible?

  #8  
Old November 8th 14, 05:40 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Bob Henson[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 695
Default Incompatible programs

On 08/11/2014 3:06 PM, philo wrote:
On 11/08/2014 08:39 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 08/11/2014 2:29 PM, Jeff Gaines wrote:
On 08/11/2014 in message Bob Henson
wrote:

Hmm, it would appear I can't do that with the VM player - I have to fork
out £160 quid for the paid version.



Why not just manually make a copy of it ?


How can it not be possible?


Which files do I need to copy - there are a lot of them, and it is far
from clear which ones I would need to copy to act as a back-up. I have
three different operating systems set up within VMware, and it is not
obvious which are which, apart from a couple of very small (around
250Kb) files which bear the name of the O/Ss.

--
Bob Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK

Hypochondria - the only illness a hypochondriac thinks he or she doesn't
have.
  #9  
Old November 8th 14, 09:08 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
philo [_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 984
Default Incompatible programs

On 11/08/2014 10:40 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 08/11/2014 3:06 PM, philo wrote:
On 11/08/2014 08:39 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 08/11/2014 2:29 PM, Jeff Gaines wrote:
On 08/11/2014 in message Bob Henson
wrote:

Hmm, it would appear I can't do that with the VM player - I have to fork
out £160 quid for the paid version.


Why not just manually make a copy of it ?


How can it not be possible?


Which files do I need to copy - there are a lot of them, and it is far
from clear which ones I would need to copy to act as a back-up. I have
three different operating systems set up within VMware, and it is not
obvious which are which, apart from a couple of very small (around
250Kb) files which bear the name of the O/Ss.




I use Virtual Box


but I think VMware uses the .vhd format

it would be a file of around 15 Gb or more
  #10  
Old November 8th 14, 11:31 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Gene E. Bloch[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7,485
Default Incompatible programs

On Sat, 08 Nov 2014 16:40:22 +0000, Bob Henson wrote:

On 08/11/2014 3:06 PM, philo wrote:
On 11/08/2014 08:39 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 08/11/2014 2:29 PM, Jeff Gaines wrote:
On 08/11/2014 in message Bob Henson
wrote:

Hmm, it would appear I can't do that with the VM player - I have to fork
out £160 quid for the paid version.


Why not just manually make a copy of it ?

How can it not be possible?


Which files do I need to copy - there are a lot of them, and it is far
from clear which ones I would need to copy to act as a back-up. I have
three different operating systems set up within VMware, and it is not
obvious which are which, apart from a couple of very small (around
250Kb) files which bear the name of the O/Ss.


It's a bit late for you now, but:

What I've done is make a separate directory for each VM (although at the
moment I only have one active VM). I put them under
Users\(me)\AppData\Roaming\VMware.

So I would copy the whole directory for

Users\(me)\AppData\Roaming\VMware\WindowsXP

(in my case) and hope that VMware isn't hiding necessary stuff
elsewhere.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)
  #11  
Old November 9th 14, 02:45 AM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
GlowingBlueMist[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 378
Default Incompatible programs


On 11/8/2014 10:40 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 08/11/2014 3:06 PM, philo wrote:
On 11/08/2014 08:39 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 08/11/2014 2:29 PM, Jeff Gaines wrote:
On 08/11/2014 in message Bob Henson
wrote:

Hmm, it would appear I can't do that with the VM player - I have to fork
out £160 quid for the paid version.


Why not just manually make a copy of it ?


How can it not be possible?


Which files do I need to copy - there are a lot of them, and it is far
from clear which ones I would need to copy to act as a back-up. I have
three different operating systems set up within VMware, and it is not
obvious which are which, apart from a couple of very small (around
250Kb) files which bear the name of the O/Ss.


Hi Bob,
I am running VP Player 6.0.4 build-2249910 and here is how I found where
the files were being stored so I could copy or even move them to another
drive or directory. Possibly I was lucky but all of my virtual machines
get stored in individual folders as I create them. I do have hidden
folders being shown on my system but don't know if that makes a
difference with the following.

1. Start the VMware Player icon so you can bring up the list of
available virtual machines you have already created.

2. Right-click on the virtual machine session you want to copy which
brings up 4 choices on my machine. Power On, Settings..., Remove from
the Library, and Delete from disk. Scroll down to Settings and left
click on that.

3. Now Left-click on the Options tab.

4. You should now see a small Working directory window on the right
middle of the window. That should be the directory where your virtual
machine is stored in. Locate it and just copy the entire directory and
you will now have a duplicate of the existing machine.

Above the Working Directory is the Virtual Machine Name window where you
can change the name of a copy so it shows up as an individual version in
the VMPlayer main menu.

5. To use the new copy, usually after renaming the folder, I start the
VMPlayer from scratch and pick the new folder and click on the .vmx file
or main .vmx if you have multiple ones. Tell the system you copied it
if you are keeping it on the same hardware or moved it if you are going
to try that virtual session with different hardware.

Good luck Bob, hopefully our systems are near enough the same for the
above to work for you.
  #12  
Old November 9th 14, 12:59 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Bob Henson[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 695
Default Incompatible programs

On 09/11/2014 1:45 AM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:

On 11/8/2014 10:40 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 08/11/2014 3:06 PM, philo wrote:
On 11/08/2014 08:39 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 08/11/2014 2:29 PM, Jeff Gaines wrote:
On 08/11/2014 in message Bob Henson
wrote:

Hmm, it would appear I can't do that with the VM player - I have to fork
out £160 quid for the paid version.


Why not just manually make a copy of it ?


How can it not be possible?


Which files do I need to copy - there are a lot of them, and it is far
from clear which ones I would need to copy to act as a back-up. I have
three different operating systems set up within VMware, and it is not
obvious which are which, apart from a couple of very small (around
250Kb) files which bear the name of the O/Ss.


Hi Bob,
I am running VP Player 6.0.4 build-2249910 and here is how I found where
the files were being stored so I could copy or even move them to another
drive or directory. Possibly I was lucky but all of my virtual machines
get stored in individual folders as I create them. I do have hidden
folders being shown on my system but don't know if that makes a
difference with the following.

1. Start the VMware Player icon so you can bring up the list of
available virtual machines you have already created.

2. Right-click on the virtual machine session you want to copy which
brings up 4 choices on my machine. Power On, Settings..., Remove from
the Library, and Delete from disk. Scroll down to Settings and left
click on that.

3. Now Left-click on the Options tab.

4. You should now see a small Working directory window on the right
middle of the window. That should be the directory where your virtual
machine is stored in. Locate it and just copy the entire directory and
you will now have a duplicate of the existing machine.

Above the Working Directory is the Virtual Machine Name window where you
can change the name of a copy so it shows up as an individual version in
the VMPlayer main menu.

5. To use the new copy, usually after renaming the folder, I start the
VMPlayer from scratch and pick the new folder and click on the .vmx file
or main .vmx if you have multiple ones. Tell the system you copied it
if you are keeping it on the same hardware or moved it if you are going
to try that virtual session with different hardware.

Good luck Bob, hopefully our systems are near enough the same for the
above to work for you.


Thanks for that, and to the other folk that replied. I've saved all the
messages and will print them out and work my way through them later.

--
Bob Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK

Squirrel - a rat with good PR.
  #13  
Old November 9th 14, 09:22 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Bob Henson[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 695
Default Incompatible programs

On 09/11/2014 1:45 AM, GlowingBlueMist wrote:

On 11/8/2014 10:40 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 08/11/2014 3:06 PM, philo wrote:
On 11/08/2014 08:39 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 08/11/2014 2:29 PM, Jeff Gaines wrote:
On 08/11/2014 in message Bob Henson
wrote:

Hmm, it would appear I can't do that with the VM player - I have to fork
out £160 quid for the paid version.


Why not just manually make a copy of it ?


How can it not be possible?


Which files do I need to copy - there are a lot of them, and it is far
from clear which ones I would need to copy to act as a back-up. I have
three different operating systems set up within VMware, and it is not
obvious which are which, apart from a couple of very small (around
250Kb) files which bear the name of the O/Ss.


Hi Bob,
I am running VP Player 6.0.4 build-2249910 and here is how I found where
the files were being stored so I could copy or even move them to another
drive or directory. Possibly I was lucky but all of my virtual machines
get stored in individual folders as I create them. I do have hidden
folders being shown on my system but don't know if that makes a
difference with the following.

1. Start the VMware Player icon so you can bring up the list of
available virtual machines you have already created.

2. Right-click on the virtual machine session you want to copy which
brings up 4 choices on my machine. Power On, Settings..., Remove from
the Library, and Delete from disk. Scroll down to Settings and left
click on that.

3. Now Left-click on the Options tab.

4. You should now see a small Working directory window on the right
middle of the window. That should be the directory where your virtual
machine is stored in. Locate it and just copy the entire directory and
you will now have a duplicate of the existing machine.

Above the Working Directory is the Virtual Machine Name window where you
can change the name of a copy so it shows up as an individual version in
the VMPlayer main menu.

5. To use the new copy, usually after renaming the folder, I start the
VMPlayer from scratch and pick the new folder and click on the .vmx file
or main .vmx if you have multiple ones. Tell the system you copied it
if you are keeping it on the same hardware or moved it if you are going
to try that virtual session with different hardware.

Good luck Bob, hopefully our systems are near enough the same for the
above to work for you.


That works just fine - I would never have looked in My Documents for the
directories, if you hadn't pointed out the working directory setting.
The first thing I noticed from the three VMs I have is that the two
Linux ones are about 8Gb and the Windows 10 one is 28Gb (with a few
extra programs installed - but not many). Anyway, tomorrow when I have
some (considerable, probably) time I'll .zip them up and store them on
my backup drive.

Thanks again for the help - that will make life considerably easier.

--
Bob Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK

I went to Waterstones and asked the saleswoman where the "Self Help"
section was. She said if she told me it would defeat the purpose.
  #14  
Old November 9th 14, 10:12 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Brian Gregory
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 648
Default Incompatible programs

On 08/11/2014 14:29, Jeff Gaines wrote:
On 08/11/2014 in message Bob Henson
wrote:

Hmm, it would appear I can't do that with the VM player - I have to fork
out £160 quid for the paid version.


Bob

How about VirtualBox:
https://www.virtualbox.org/

It's a Yorkshireman's favourite price :-)


Yes I have Windows 10 TP running quite nicely in a VirtualBox 4.3.18 VM.
The guest additions install and work too.
The only odd thing is that I can't get the video display in the Virtual
machine to be any size other than the standard 4:3 sizes 800*600,
1024*768, 1152*864 etc.

--

Brian Gregory (in the UK).
To email me please remove all the letter vee from my email address.
  #15  
Old November 9th 14, 11:16 PM posted to alt.comp.os.windows-10
Paul
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 18,275
Default Incompatible programs

Bob Henson wrote:


That works just fine - I would never have looked in My Documents for the
directories, if you hadn't pointed out the working directory setting.
The first thing I noticed from the three VMs I have is that the two
Linux ones are about 8Gb and the Windows 10 one is 28Gb (with a few
extra programs installed - but not many). Anyway, tomorrow when I have
some (considerable, probably) time I'll .zip them up and store them on
my backup drive.

Thanks again for the help - that will make life considerably easier.


There are data reclamation procedures you can do on things like
..vhd files to make them smaller. If intending to compress such
a file for long term storage, you might do something like that
as the first step.

Every time a virtual disk does a storage operation, there is
an opportunity to create a non-zero sector in the process.
The .vhd format, doesn't use physical space, for any sector
that contains exactly 512 zeros. Once a sector goes "non-zero",
then a real sector of storage is burned up by the container.

To take advantage of that, you use any tool that creates a file
of zeros. You can't use fsutil for this on NTFS, because it
creates sparse files. You want a utility that physically writes
every sector it says it will write.

dd.exe if=/dev/zero of=C:\downloads\big00.dd bs=65536

When run in the guest, that writes zeros in any available
data clusters, until all the space is gone. The very next
command would be

del C:\downloads\big00.dd

That deletes the file, so the guest won't be complaining
about all the space being gone. Now, all the sectors visited,
contain zeros, and are candidates to be chucked out of the
container.

Now, shut down the VM. The VM hosting software, should
have a tool for working on .vhd or similar images. One
option, is to "re-write" a .vhd. In the process, if the
tool finds a sector which contains 512 bytes of zeros,
the newly created copy of the .vhd, will not have a physical
sector stored on the host disk. So all of the zeroed out
space is reclaimed, with respect to the size of the .vhd
on the host file system.

So for example, say the .vhd in the real world is 40GB,
and inside the host the partitions total 28GB of used
space. By doing the above procedure, when the .vhd is written
out, it will be ~28GB.

For OSes that have pagefiles and hiberfiles, you likely
have further options for "cleaning". Only worthwhile
for long term storage perhaps. You might be able to get
Win10 down to about 14GB or so, with a little work. But
if you're only going to open Win10 tomorrow, fiddling
with the pagefile wouldn't be worth it.

I have a partition that has nothing but VM images on it,
and there is only about 50GB of free space left. And on
occasion, I do a data reclamation on one of the bigger
..vhd files, in order to keep some free space available
on the partition. It's not the kind of thing to make
a fetish out of it, but if a .vhd has gone for a
couple of years without maintenance, it might benefit
from a sprucing up, to make the wasted space smaller.

Once a partition is cleaned that way, and the .vhd
is smaller, you can then compress it for a further
saving. You could do 7Z ultra for example. But that
has a tangible cost - it might cost you a dollar
of electricity, to compress a 1TB hard drive sized image
that way. The compression runtime can be quite long.

Paul
 




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