Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

Microsoft offers a free product key to use with this version of Windows Vista. This product key is good until May 2007. You can run the program "SLUI 3" to set the product key.

IE7 in this LivePC tossed me a curve as it blocks all downloads. And sites that I expected to work were causing IE7 to abend and restart at an alarming frequency.

I set protected mode to "off" and lowered the security settings then started reinstalling all the plug-ins and addons. So far Flash and JAVA have been required.

I have been using this Live PC for several days now. Two new issues have appeared.

The first is that the system runs at or near 100% utilization for a significant part of the time.

Second is that the full Live PC image has never completely buffered. No matter how long I wait it always ranges between 2% and 89% complete.

Hi Rick,

I too have noticed the 100% utilization occurring when using IE in Vista. IE on Vista is also really restricted by default. Firefox 2.0 does not have these problems. I'm working on a stripped down, customized Vista that is much smaller and configured without many of the annoyances that Vista has turned on by default.

The buffering problem sounds like you don't have enough cache space to hold the LivePCs. The default install gives you 2GB cache space, which is not enough to hold this complete version of Vista. If it doesn't let you click on "Let me use this LivePC offline", that means there is not enough space in your cache. The easiest way to get a bigger cache right now is to uninstall and reinstall the LivePC Engine. (Don't worry, you can choose to not delete your LivePCs on uninstall.) Future versions will let you adjust the cache size without having to reinstall or recreate the cache.

-John

PS. You need at least 1GB to run this LivePC effectively.

Not trying to be awkward but has MS given permission for this? I ask because I was involved in discussions about using VMware guests for evaluations and MS said it was not permissible to redistribute Windows in any form, including trial versions or virtual machines. That is why you won't find any Windows based virtual appliances at the VMware web site.

Just a heads up.

Dave

Hello all,

Thanks for your comments and trying out the Vista LivePC. I've posted an update that slims Vista down quite a bit. It also fixes a few issues and now includes Firefox as the default web browser.

I removed the following components:

• WinSxS/backup
• Driver cache. There were 1GB of drivers which are not necessary when running on a virtual machine.
• Games: Purble Place, Chess, Mahjong. They are large and 3D acceleration doesn't work.
• Sample videos/music
• Movie Maker DVD styles (Sports, performance, pets)
• Media Center Display calibration videos
• Windows Media Center executables. Media Center did not work correctly without 3D, so I removed it.
• Help videos

This managed to save over 1.1GiB in the compressed image! Now the LivePC should fit within the default 2GiB cache size.

I made the following changes to the LivePC configuration:

• Changed default search provider to "Google"
• Installed and set default browser to Firefox. IE7 on Vista does not seem to work very well.
• Installed Adobe Flash Player in Firefox
• Changed IE to security zone "Medium", allow unsigned ActiveX controls
• Turned off Windows Defender

There are still some open issues in this version - if you have any suggestions on how to fix these, please let me know:

• Click on "Me" in start menu, all folders appear twice
• "LivePC local documents" is not hooked up
• Mouse cursor does not leave Window when moved to the edge
• Broken Windows Media Center icon in "Welcome Center"
• Flash Player not configured in IE
• Broken "Sample Videos" link in "My Videos"

I made a lot of changes to this version so something may have broken that I'm not aware of. Please let me know if you see any other issues and I'll try to fix them as soon as I can.

-John

it will not buffer past 64 percent, and also can u give me the 1st version. i would like to have media center

it is saying i dont have enough graphics memmory to run aero. can i change the amount i wanna use in the settings somewhere?

There isn't support for Aero Glass yet; stay tuned and we might release something, a la our 3D graphics acceleration...

-John

i did that and now it wont let me connect to the intranet

Unfortunately Media Center never worked right, even on the old version. It appears to require 3D graphics acceleration to run, which is not supported yet. If you want to go back to the old version, you could always post a new LivePC with the URL of the old version: http://repo.moka5.com/vista/20061215p/vm.xml

-John

it will not let me copy d3d8thk.dll into c: windows/ system 32 will that effect the install of the drivers?

The 3D graphics acceleration doesn't work for Vista yet. Vista uses a different driver model so we need to use a different technique to intercept DirectX calls. A future version of the 3D graphics will support Vista.

-John

After May 2007, What should you do to run Vista or does it just not work anymore?

I'm with you Dave... How can a virtual PC product built using Windows Vista possibly be legal? Though given the fact there is no response to this question, maybe that is a clue to the answer?

Daniel