Diary of a Network Geek

The trials and tribulations of a Certified Novell Engineer who's been stranded in Houston, Texas.

5/30/2010

Windows 7 Virtual Machine

Filed under: Geek Work,GUI Center,MicroSoft — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Monkey which is mid-afternoon or 4:48 pm for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

I probably should have posted this last week, when it was fresh, but…

So, I have this issue at work.  We run an older version of Autodesk Inventor.  Actually, Inventor 10, which we really only use for AutoCAD 2006.  But, this presents a problem.  You see, this version of Inventor won’t install on Windows 7.  Might work on Vista, but who in their right mind would run Vista?  Right, so, I’ve got a problem.  If I want to upgrade someone’s Windows version, or even their whole machine, I can’t.  So, what to do?

Well, as it turns out, if you get the super, ultimate, Professional version of Windows 7, it comes with a Windows XP “compatibility mode”, which is really just a virtual machine.  If you crank up that virtual machine, it will install that old version of the program my engineers and draftsman absolutely must use.  What’s cool, though, is that once you install it, it makes short-cuts on the Start menu that let you launch the old program encapsulated in that virtual machine.  How cool is that?!  So, problem solved, right?

Well, almost.  Turns out the one guy I installed it for, as a test, is having some issues with adding text to a drawing.  I haven’t quite figured that bit out yet, but, still, I’m working on it.  And, all things considered, it’s a small glitch in an otherwise very clean solution.

Uh, yeah, so you may now return to your regular Memorial Day Weekend time-wasting on the Internet.
That is all.

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