Testing under Multiple OS

[Glasgow]

This is not directly relevant to VB6 but could be useful for anyone testing applications under different versions of Windows.

Not sure how widely known this is but there was a product around called Connectix Virtual PC which effectively supports multiple Windows installations on a single PC. This product was recommended to us and we downloaded a trial version and it seemed to work fine. Looked good as could save us a fortune in hardware as we might otherwise have had to have a number of PC's set up with different versions of Windows - either that or mess with dual boot scenarios.

Microsoft have now acquired this product but their own badged version is not yet available. However, MSDN subscribers can download a full version of the Connectix product free of charge.

Look under 'Platforms' in MSDN Universal downloads - Connectix Virtual PC for Windows 5.2.

We have been using it for a few weeks on and off and it seems to be a pretty good tool.

Hope this is of some use to some of you.

 

[zemp]

Sounds interesting. Sounds like it is worth a look.

What we did was create a test machine with a removable hard drive. We have multiple hard drives that can be set up with different operating systems and over all configurations combinations. Just pop in the OS and configuration that you want and away you go.

Thanks and Good Luck!

zemp

 

[Glasgow]

Yes that would have been a good alternative and certainly cheaper than multiple PCs. We had a few spare PC's kicking around and would have used them. Now we can get rid of them and tidy up a bit!

 

[chiph]

We used to use a Iomega Jaz drive (a 1-gb removable storage media) and PowerQuest DriveImage software. Whenever we'd need to test we'd restore the drive image from the Jaz cartridge and we'd then have a virgin machine to test against. After making a mess with our install we'd just reload the image.

I think the recent versions of DriveImage and Norton Ghost will write to optical media, so if you have a CD-RW or DVD+RW drive it might be easier than it was for us.

Chip H.


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[JAG14]

We use Ghost with Standard CD-R's for OS testing, The Image for Win 95/98/Me Quite comfortably fit on one CD. While 2000/NT4 WStn Fit on two with all options.

All the PC's in the office have XP on them, and we use an XP Virgin machine for testing purposes.

The good thing about Ghost and CD-R's is that one PC will do you and it can load an image in les than 4 minutes!.

[tt]"Do not put off until tomorrow what you cannot put off until the day after tomorrow just as well." - Mark Twain[/tt]

 

[Eldaria]

vmware also makes a Virtual PC software.

See

http://www.vmware.com

Eldaria

http://www.eldaria.net

That was my 25cent** of opinion.

** Inclusive Intrest, tax on interest, Genral tax, Enviromental tax, Tax, and tax on intrest, tax on fees, tax on tax, and other Various taxes and fees.

 

[Glasgow]

I guess the significant factor is that the Connectix product is effectively available to MSDN subscribers free of charge.

Most of the 98/ME images are about 250-300Mb while NT is 600Mb and Win2k is 2.1Gb (though I may have done something wrong with that one so perhaps could be smaller).