I upgrade and lose features?


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Slight frustration this evening and it?s left me with this question ? are we taking a step back or are there legitimate reason for the removal of features when MS products are updated?

Two things this evening:

 

1) I?ve recently moved from Win 7 to Win 8.1 and no longer have VirtuallPC, that?s fine because there is the all new Hyper-V.  Hyper-V doesn?t support copy and paste between the host and the VM, neither does it allow drag and drop ? two things I used a lot but now are not available ? why? Why not even give the option to switch them on in settings.

 

2) IE11 ? Ive found that I can no longer position shortcuts in the order I want on the favourites bar ? for no reason, IE11 positions URLs first and then shortcuts to other files, very annoying as I can no longer position my direct Roboform logins at the positions I like them ? now they all go to the end, after my url shortcuts.

 

Maybe Im just irritable tonight but it seems to me we get upgrades and we lose features ? I could understand it if we was alerted to a security risk or something like that but when they just go ? I wonder why Im paying money to upgrade.

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Sorry to hear about your frustration.  Although it doesn't fix the issue with the VM software you are using, you could give Virtualbox a shot.  I've been running it on my Linux PC for years to run Windows VMs for testing purposes, and once you install the Guest Additions you can copy and paste between host/guest, and forward your USB ports to the guest as well, giving the guest OS direct access to the hardware connected to your USB ports.

 

Check them out at www.virtualbox.org

 

I don't have a copy of Windows 8, so I can't help you with your browser issue though.  :-(  Hope you can get it all worked out.

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Sorry to hear about your frustration.  Although it doesn't fix the issue with the VM software you are using, you could give Virtualbox a shot.  I've been running it on my Linux PC for years to run Windows VMs for testing purposes, and once you install the Guest Additions you can copy and paste between host/guest, and forward your USB ports to the guest as well, giving the guest OS direct access to the hardware connected to your USB ports.

 

Check them out at www.virtualbox.org

 

I don't have a copy of Windows 8, so I can't help you with your browser issue though.  :-(  Hope you can get it all worked out.

 

Thanks, I will give it a try :-)

 

Issue with IE11 has been proven, a few experts on Technet have acknowledged it but have been unable to provide a solution :-(

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You could remote desktop in to your VM, you will then be able to copy & paste between the host os and the VM.

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You could remote desktop in to your VM, you will then be able to copy & paste between the host os and the VM.

True, it's more of a workaround tho and not readily available like it was with VPC.

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Is there not an option for Guest Integration Services within Hyper V in windows 8?

 

It should be under the VMs hardware config.

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As rr_dRock said you need to install the integration services in your guest OS. Some Linux distros don't work with it yet like Debian. (Wheezy ISO doesn't have the kernel modules.)

 

As for the IE issue I'm not sure what you mean I guess. I have no problems reorganizing the bookmarks on my favorites bar.

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Is there not an option for Guest Integration Services within Hyper V in windows 8?

It should be under the VMs hardware config.

Not that I know of but I will certainly have a look tomorrow - thanks :-)

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I updated a PS3 once and lost the otherOS feature that was printed on the sales box. I got $8.32 from Sony in a class action lawsuit though which totally bought me another cell-processor device with bluray to run Linux on.

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Slight frustration this evening and it?s left me with this question ? are we taking a step back or are there legitimate reason for the removal of features when MS products are updated?

Two things this evening:

 

1) I?ve recently moved from Win 7 to Win 8.1 and no longer have VirtuallPC, that?s fine because there is the all new Hyper-V.  Hyper-V doesn?t support copy and paste between the host and the VM, neither does it allow drag and drop ? two things I used a lot but now are not available ? why? Why not even give the option to switch them on in settings.

 

2) IE11 ? Ive found that I can no longer position shortcuts in the order I want on the favourites bar ? for no reason, IE11 positions URLs first and then shortcuts to other files, very annoying as I can no longer position my direct Roboform logins at the positions I like them ? now they all go to the end, after my url shortcuts.

 

Maybe Im just irritable tonight but it seems to me we get upgrades and we lose features ? I could understand it if we was alerted to a security risk or something like that but when they just go ? I wonder why Im paying money to upgrade.

 

1. Depending on your guest OS copy and paste should absolutely be supported. Check that you've installed the updated integration disk.

 

2. I'm not sure what you mean. I created a file shortcut to a notepad file and I was able to move URL shortcuts and it freely anywhere I wanted to. What kinds of "other files" do you mean?  And besides, why are you still using the favorites bar? Pin to the Start Screen or the Task Bar -- it's faster.

 

All that said, there are always features that are deprecated when upgrading. For example, we've long lost the ability to create desktop toolbars. It's always unfortunate when you're one of the few that use a feature that Microsoft (or any developer) deems unworthy of being included in a new release. I hate that they removed scheduled backups, for example. But at least we can work around that -- even if we lose historical snapshots.

 

My recommendation is to do your research before you upgrade to make sure the features you really care about are available. Or, better yet, TRY to learn the new paradigms. Often you'll find faster or otherwise better ways to accomplish your tasks.

 

-Forjo

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1. Depending on your guest OS copy and paste should absolutely be supported. Check that you've installed the updated integration disk.

 

2. I'm not sure what you mean. I created a file shortcut to a notepad file and I was able to move URL shortcuts and it freely anywhere I wanted to. What kinds of "other files" do you mean?  And besides, why are you still using the favorites bar? Pin to the Start Screen or the Task Bar -- it's faster.

 

All that said, there are always features that are deprecated when upgrading. For example, we've long lost the ability to create desktop toolbars. It's always unfortunate when you're one of the few that use a feature that Microsoft (or any developer) deems unworthy of being included in a new release. I hate that they removed scheduled backups, for example. But at least we can work around that -- even if we lose historical snapshots.

 

My recommendation is to do your research before you upgrade to make sure the features you really care about are available. Or, better yet, TRY to learn the new paradigms. Often you'll find faster or otherwise better ways to accomplish your tasks.

 

-Forjo

You can still do auto backup in windows 8.1.

 

Probably i don't understand what you are trying to say by removed scheduled backup because i can still do it myself. Can you please give more information about that please.

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The proper solution to the first one is to use RDP. The Console for Hyper-V is purposefully limited for basic access to get you going and does not support copy/paste, file drag/drop, etc regardless of what your guest OS is or what VM additions you've got installed. When you want all that ease of use stuff, you should move "up" to the RDP client, which supports all of those things. As an aside, RDP is also what you use to connect to Azure VMs, so I'd say it's pretty evident that's where the bulk of the "feature work" will be done.

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Slight frustration this evening and it?s left me with this question ? are we taking a step back or are there legitimate reason for the removal of features when MS products are updated?

As user Jaybonaut already mentioned, this is not a new.

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Keep in mind that you can run Virtual PC 2007 SP1 on Windows 8.1, even if the scenario isn't officially supported by Microsoft. It is a convoluted process, but it can be done:

 

- Install Virtual PC 2007 SP1, then install the patch roll-up (KB958162.msp). You need to run the .msp using an elevated command prompt: msiexec /p <path of file>

- Find the executable Virtual PC.exe and rename it to anything else so that the WIndows 8 compatibility infrastructure dialog box ("Known compatibility issues") doesn't appear anymore. Don't open Virtual PC yet.

- Install the Windows Phone SDK 7.1, and install the 7.1.1 update. You can find both in the Microsoft Download Center. This step is essential: the SDK replaces the incompatible driver used by Virtual PC, vmm.sys, with a driver that has been updated to work with Windows 8.

- Reboot your computer. Virtual PC will now launch and work fine.

 

This technique has been discussed more in-depth here:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/c07d4fb8-e0ab-4d01-8a37-e10f0c9ed825/virtual-pc-in-windows-8?forum=W8ITProPreRel

 

If you decide to migrate to a more modern virtual machine software, then you have a clean slate anyway -- in that case, VirtualBox might be a better choice than Hyper-V that is extremely enterprise-oriented.

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You can still do auto backup in windows 8.1.

 

Probably i don't understand what you are trying to say by removed scheduled backup because i can still do it myself. Can you please give more information about that please.

You can no longer schedule a full backup that includes a system image and maintains point-in-time (historical) backups. You are still able to perform a manual system image, and you can schedule that manually using the Task Scheduler, but your backups overwrite each other so you can't restore from previous days.

 

What Microsoft has "given" us is File History - which is great for files, but does nothing for programs and settings.

 

-Forjo

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Virtual PC was only included in Windows 7 as a means to run XP Mode, it was never meant to be a full VM solution. As far as I'm aware, you'll need to install the guest additions, and copy/paste should work in Hyper-V.

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BasicSession_2.png

 

Clickedy Click.

 

you don't need to use gen 2 vms in hyperv. If you are installing an old os or 32 bit os use a gen 1 vm

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The proper solution to the first one is to use RDP. The Console for Hyper-V is purposefully limited for basic access to get you going and does not support copy/paste, file drag/drop, etc regardless of what your guest OS is or what VM additions you've got installed. When you want all that ease of use stuff, you should move "up" to the RDP client, which supports all of those things. As an aside, RDP is also what you use to connect to Azure VMs, so I'd say it's pretty evident that's where the bulk of the "feature work" will be done.

Is RDP something that I set up once and can just use it afterwards anytime? That's what I liked about VPC.

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Is RDP something that I set up once and can just use it afterwards anytime? That's what I liked about VPC.

RDP is just Remote Desktop.  You can create Remote Desktop files and save them, then you can just double click that file to remote into that particular machine.  There is also an MMC snapin for Remote Desktop that lets you save machines in a list so all you have to do is click the machine you want in the column on the left and its screen will appear in the information pane on the right.

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A couple of the reasons why I've avoided Win 8.x for now. You're right they keep taking little bits away. Sometimes this is good, sometimes it isn't.

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Everybody likes to link those pages and always fail to mention all the new things that get added too.

And XP always gets skipped too.

List of features removed in Windows XP - Wikipedia entry

Not exactly a new trend. Stuff gets added, stuff gets removed.

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