Update on Windows 7 bios problems

John Paul Cook — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:59:00 GMT

Microsoft sent me an updated ASUS bios (1902) to solve my problem of hardware virtualization not being enabled after resuming from sleep mode. This was an unexpected pleasant surprise after receiving this email from ASUS yesterday: Dear Valued Customer,...(read more)

Using Wireless with Hyper-V

John Paul Cook — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:52:00 GMT

For those of us who do demos on laptops, Hyper-V provides great performance but no wireless capability. You simply can't bind a Hyper-V virtual machine to a wireless adapter, but you can implement a workaround in just a few minutes. There are three options. One option is to use Internet Connection Sharing (ICS, see Ben Armstrong's blog http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/01/09/using-hyper-v-with-a-wireless-network-adapter.aspx). ICS imposes a restriction that seems too inconvenient to me. It requires an IP address of 192.168.0.1, which is also the default address for many NAT routers. Although it is possible to change the NAT router's address, there are always networks you're not allowed to reconfigure. A second option is to use Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS, see Ken Schaefer's blog http://www.adopenstatic.com/cs/blogs/ken/archive/2008/01/17/15530.aspx). RRAS offers the flexibility of being able to change the IP address it uses to avoid conflicts. It requires the most steps but it can still be configured in under 10 minutes. The third option, which was suggested by a reader, is to bridge network connections. It's simple and quick to implement. My personal recommendation is to use RRAS.

Ken described the steps in written form. After explaining this in person to several people, I'm providing the screen captures so you can see exactly what you need to do for implementing either a network bridge or RRAS. The initial steps are the same for both.

You'll need to bind your virtual machines to an internal only virtual network adapter. Use the Virtual Network Manager in Hyper-V to accomplish this. Notice a meaningful name of Virtual Internal Network was specified, which is referenced in the next step. This step is necessary for both RRAS and bridging network connections.

To implement RRAS or a network bridge, go to Manage network connections to configure the network adapter. Notice that in this example, the Virtual Internal Network name from the previous step appears under Local Area Connection 3.

Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click the Properties button. This is the same for both RRAS and a network bridge.

To implement a network bridge, configure the virtual network adapter to use DHCP.
To implement RRAS, assign a static IP address on a different subnet than the one the wireless adapter is connecting to. The wireless adapter is connecting to a 192.168.0.x network, so 192.168.1.1 is specified to provide a different subnet for the virtual machines.

DHCP for Network Bridge Static IP for RRAS

To implement a network bridge, select both the virtual network adapter and the wireless adapter. Right-click and select Bridge Connections.

Your virtual machines bound to this bridged network adapter can use the wireless network adapter but they will not be able to access the host partition (physical computer) because of Windows Firewall. If you need your child partitions to have full connectivity to the parent partition, you'll need to change your Windows Firewall settings. On the Advanced tab, uncheck the network bridge to allow communication between the parent and child partitions. This is similar to what is shown in the last screen capture in this post.

To implement RRAS, add the RRAS role to your Hyper-V server. In the Server Manager, right-click Roles and select Add Roles.

A wizard will appear. Click Next to advance to the dialog box shown below. Check the box for Network Policy and Access Services and then click Next.

You'll see a dialog box with no options. Click Next to advance to the following dialog box. Check the box for Routing and Remote Access Services. Be sure the two checkboxes underneath it are checked and click Next.

Click the Install button to install RRAS. When the installation finishes, click the Close button.

Once RRAS is installed, use the Server Manager to configure it. Right-click on Routing and Remote Access and select Configure and Enable Routing and Remote Access.

Select Network address translation (NAT) and click Next.

Select your wireless network adapter and click Next.

Select the network interface you assigned the static IP address to and click Next.

Select Enable basic name and address services and click Next.

Click Next and then click Finish on the screen that follow.

At this point, your virtual machine (called the child partition in Hyper-V parlance) has network connectivity, but not to the host physical machine (called the parent partition). If you want to enable child partition network access to the parent partition, you'll need to configure exceptions in Windows Firewall or disable it completely on the virtual network adapter used by your virtual machines.

Keep in mind that what was disabled here is the firewall on the internal network connection. The virtual machines are being routed to the network using the wireless adapter which is still protected by Windows Firewall.

John Paul Cook : virtualization

Update on Windows 7 bios problems

Using Wireless with Hyper-V