Microsoft Virtualization In Depth

I just received mine with the QX9300, 8GB of RAM and  dual 64GB SSD's in RAID 0 among other goodies.  There are quite a few issues with the stability of the Dell drivers but I'm sure they will be worked out over time.   I did have to modify the inf’s for the Bluetooth drivers to get them to load properly in 2008 but otherwise the Vista x64 drivers install fine.  Going to fire up some VM’s and will let you know how it goes.

I got mine on Wednesday, but have not had time to reload it with W2K8 and Hyper-V yet! It would be interesting to take a look at performance with the SSDs. Please share your experiences when you have time.

What did you need to change on bluetooth. Were you the Dell Control Point Stuff

Have you had any joy with the security stuff - there don't appear to be appropriate drivers on the MY Dell driver CD and the broad-comm ones on Dell's website haven't played well yet. Everything else is working.  I had to use Intel's drivers for my Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN before that would work

I still have two unknown devices that appear, but all other software loaded without issue. For bluetooth support, this blog entry has everything you need to get it working: www.windows-now.com/.../enabling-bluetooth-on-windows-server-2008.aspx

I've gotten all the devices installed.  The last one was a pain to find but it's the wireless usb controller and the driver and the drivers is R197537.exe.  Just extract and update the driver for the unknown device from device manager.  As for your other unknown device if you send me the pci id I could probably tell you what it is.

BJurkovski - I did finally get all my devices installed!  The RFCOMM driver was the last holdout, but figured it out after a little more research! Any impressions yet? I'm beginning to load VMs today.

I've still got 3 devices and the Boradcom USH not loading the the Wifi seems to be messed up.  Any ideas??

Richard - Which devices? Go into the device Manager, and lookup the Hardware IDs in the device properties Detail pane.

The Wifi is not enabling although showing and here are the Device and Interupt.

PCI BUS 3, Device 1 Interputs, 3,4 and 5

BroadCom USH ( and the one I downloaded from Dell give 16 bit error )

Wifi Driver not working although Driver say properly loaded.

Once I got Wireless working then I was able to use the System Web Search for Drivers and get all devices working.  Thanks.

How did you get the wireless working???

Josh - As far as the wireless drivers, you will have to enable the Wireless LAN Service before you can load them. W2K8 does not install this service by default. To enable it, open up the Server Manager, click Features, then Add Features. In the Add Features wizard, scroll to the bottom of the list, and select Wireless LAN Service. Complete the wizard and let it install the service. After that service is enabled, you can load your drivers. However, be advised that Hyper-V does not support wireless adapters, so you will not see it as an option to bind any external networks to it. If you need additional network adapters for Hyper-V, buy yourself a Linksys ExpressCard network adapter.

Are you guys using Vista drivers, XP drivers, or what, many of the vista drivers are not working for me....'

Help

Howie - Yes, Vista drivers are what I used. I did not encounter any problems with them...Which ones are you having problems with?

Thanks for the posts guys, was having the same issues on wifi, after reading worked like a charm!!! Just use the vista drivers

I've got my M6400 setup with HyperV and also the Vista desktop Theme (Aero). 16GB RAM, Quad Core Extreme, Nvidia Quatro FX 3700M. There are two issues that I'm seeing that I'm wondering if anyone else is seeing:

1. Occasional BSOD on boot IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors. Haven't been able to track this down to a specific driver/piece of hardware.

2. VERY poor video performance. I can hardly play any video files, audio playback is poor as well. Screen display during "regular" use e.g. opening message in outlook, opening word, scrolling down on internet pages, etc.

I've upgraded to the lates A05 BIOS, video drivers (all drivers are from Dell's support page, using the X64 Vista drivers)

Running Windows Server 2008 Ent.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Mark - I've not experienced either of these problems, but I have not upgraded to 16 GB yet. I only have 6 GB at this point. Without much other information, it certainly seems like it could be driver issues based on what you describe...or maybe a memory issue. Did you try to downgrade to less than 16 GB to see if the behavior is the same?

Thanks vs-admin,

Yes, I've gone to 8GB RAM, don't think I can test 6GB RAM because of my chips.

Do you have fingerprint reader/security chip? I've tried to disable that from the OS with no luck.

CPU doesn't seem to be spiking so I'm guessing it's an interupt issue. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Mark

Mark - Yes, I have the fingerprint reader and have used it without any issues.  I'm going to upgrade to the latest drivers/BIOS, so let's see what happens. I'll let you know...

Mark - I upgraded my M6400 with the latest BIOS and drivers. No performance degradation on my side. Any luck?

hi guys,

I just orderd a m6400 dual core laptop from ebay. Does anyone if hte dual core has hte Intel VT needed for Hyper-V

Tony,

You don't mention the exact CPU, but if it is a Core 2 Duo P8xxx or better, than you should be able to run Hyper-V without any issues. I have an M6400 Quad-Core and a Latitude D830 and they both have Hyper-V loaded and running flawlessly.

Good Luck!

Thanks for starting this thread, you helped me get started by remembering to enable the wifi service in Win2008Server.

I currently have a M6400 running as a screaming fast development machine. I am a Sharepoint developer so I run the following:

Core partition operating system:

Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM with Hyper-V role installed.

VM's

1. SBS2008 for Domain, DNS, Active Directory, Exchange

2. Windows 7 RC 64bit

3. Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server in Win2ksp2

4. Windows Vista Biz 64bit.

5. Another Win2008 64bit for creating snapshots and diff disks from.

I have 8gb of memory now and I can run #1, #3, #2, and sometimes #4.

A real powerful machine and I am glad Dell produced it.

It definitely helps me professionally.

Any updates here, guys? Were the video and audio problems resolved?

I just got an M4400 and I'm having troubles with the BroadCom USH driver and as well as activating the Bluetooth in order to install the drivers.  How did you guys do it?