As promised here are the slides and source code for yesterday's "Automating Testing Using Windows Virtual PC" presentation at the MVP Open Day. The sister presentation to this one is "Automating Testing Using Virtual Server 2005" and you can download the slides and source code for this one. If you are using Virtual Server 2005 you might like to download both as the Windows Virtual PC presentation is more recent and contains slightly more code that is still applicable to Virtual Server 2005.

I've been bitten a few times by a 'feature' in Windows Virtual PC where all of my virtual machines disappear so I thought I'd write about the problem and how to solve it to save anyone else the grief of rebuilding their virtual machine list.

My current Windows Virtual PC list looks like this:-

As you can see from Primary Disk column on the right I keep all of my virtual machines (except Windows XP Mode) on a separate USB drive. The consequence is that the drive is not always plugged in. The Windows Virtual PC 'feature' is that if I accidentally start a virtual machine and forget to have my USB drive plugged in then it fails to run the virtual machine (fair enough, no problem here) and then removes all references to all virtual machines on that drive (not fair enough and a truly stupid idea):-

The solution lies in understanding that the Windows Virtual PC console is just a view on a folder. On this Windows 7 machine this is C:\Users\Guy Smith-Ferrier\Virtual Machines. Here's what the folder looks like in a command window before Windows Virtual PC has 'fixed' it:-

And here's what it looks like again after Windows Virtual PC has removed all of my references:-

Clearly Windows Virtual PC has simply deleted all of the VMCX files that refer to virtual machines on the USB drive. There are a number of solutions to the problem. The first and simplest is to use the Recycle Bin to undelete the VMCX files from the Virtual Machines folder. This is the best option although I have to say that I am not always convinced they are always present in the Recycle Bin. Alternatively you could have the foresight to have saved a copy of your VMCX files so that you can just copy them back to the Virtual Machines folder. If neither of these options are available to you then the fallback solution is to start each and every virtual machine that used to be in the list by double clicking on the virtual machine's VMC file and then the VMCX file will be automatically recreated.

Windows Virtual PC (for Windows 7 on machines with hardware virtualization enabled) and Windows XP Mode have RTMed and are available for free download at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx. There are many new features in Windows Virtual PC beyond those of Virtual PC 2007 but the feature of most interest to me is the fact that unlike Virtual PC 2007 Windows Virtual PC has an API which allows the virtual machines to be automated. The API is very similar but not identical to the Virtual Server API. If you're interested in this subject then stay tuned as I will be posting the slides and more importantly the code for my Automating Testing Using Windows Virtual PC presentation in the next few weeks.

BTW if you are planning on installing Virtual PC 2007 on your Windows 7 box it will not install with Windows Virtual PC present so you will have to uninstall it first.

It is always a happy day for me when a new version of one of my favourite tools is released. ZoomIt 4, the presenter's best friend, was released in August. The main new feature is LiveZoom. To be honest LiveZoom (by default available from Ctrl+4) is the way I thought the regular Ctrl+1 zoom facility should have worked from the beginning: it allows you to zoom in on something on your screen but leaves the computer still functioning so you can click and type and generally use the computer whilst still zoomed. Perfect. The caveat is that the LiveZoom feature only works on Windows Vista and higher but this is not a problem for most presenters.