Hotfix rollup package for Virtual PC 2007 SP1

On February 20 Microsoft released a hotfix rollup package for Virtual PC 2007 SP1.
What's so cool about this is that it adds the long awaited support for resolutions higher then 1600x1200.

Virtual PC 2007 hotfix package, 32-bit versions

 

 

Download the 958162 package now.

Here's a list of improvements and issues that are fixed:

Improvement 1

• The Virtual PC 2007 support matrix is extended to include the following SKUs:
• Windows XP Home with Service Pack 2 (SP2)
• Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3 (SP3)
• Windows Vista Home with Service Pack1 (SP1)

These additional SKUs were not supported before this hotfix. These Home SKUs are currently supported in this hotfix rollup. Additionally, the following SKUs are supported as guest operating systems:

• Windows XP Home with Service Pack 2 (SP2)
• Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3 (SP3)

Improvement 2
This hotfix rollup includes following significant performance and stability improvements in virtual machine networking:
A virtual machine that uses a network in the Shared Networking (NAT) mode has severely low performance compared to a virtual machine that uses the Bridged Network mode. This hotfix rollup provides a marked improvement in virtual machine networking performance in Shared Networking (NAT) mode.
When using a bridged mode of networking, the guest will mirror the connection state of the host network adapter to which the guest adapter has been bound. When using Shared Networking (NAT), the guest network adapter will be disconnected only when all network adapters on the host are disconnected.
It takes a long time to copy multiple and large files to and from a virtual machine that is using the Shared Networking (NAT) mode. Additionally, this process sometimes results in stopping the network connection or stopping the copying process.
Auto detection of the http proxy works with Shared Networking (NAT) after you install this hotfix rollup.
This hotfix rollup sets the correct WINS address as part of the DHCP address assignment.

Improvement 3
The resolution is now extended to 2048x1920 (32bit). Virtual PC 2007 SP1 supported a screen resolution of up to 1600 x 1200.

This hotfix also fixes the following issues that are not previously documented in a Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

Issue 1
If a virtual machine window is closed while one of its child windows is active, the Virtual PC 2007 process crashes.

Issue 2
Some operating systems crash when they run in the virtual machine. When this happens, the host operating system may crash. This problem occurs when the guest operating system allocates the system memory in such a way that the virtual machine monitor component of virtual PC cannot find memory for its internal data structures. Under such circumstances, virtual machine monitor returns a fatal error exception to the guest operating system and prevents the crash on the host operating system.

Issue 3
Inconsistent behavior of Virtual PC 2007 occurs when you shut down a virtual machine that has the Undo disks option enabled. A dialog box may be displayed to ask you to decide what you want to do with your virtual hard disks when the close action is set to Automatically close without any message.

Issue 4
The virtual machine additions installation cannot start and shows the Windows Installer Help window. This problem occurs when the value of environment variable %temp% in the guest operating system includes a white-space.