Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Posted on August 10th, 2008 by Steve Cassidy
The Virtual Finger
No not the middle finger… Those who are keen followers of the articles pages here might have seen my little refugee item-ette from a forthcoming PC Pro feature: for those who haven’t, I confess my fragile ego wants me toshow it to you. Not because I took the photos all on my own (though I did, with my Sony with the busted CF door sensor that drives me nuts) but because I’ve just been through a bodge cycle on the HP ML115 that gave me the giggles.
I now find out of course, that VMWare Server isn’t officially supported on Windows Server 2008. Beta 2.0 is but that’s a whole different world, and I need Bowie, Iggy and friends to run without hassle. Searching in the usual places produces a load of whingers who don’t see why it can’t work, and almost nobody who really has the inside track…
…and one completely crazy fix. The problem is, Windows Sever 2008 won’t run with unsigned drivers, unless you press F8 on startup and choose the option which – well, runs without checking driver signing. There is no way to automate this within Windows: you can automate the opposite, so it never runs an unsigned driver: but you can’t turn the check off.
Well, unless you use ReadyDriverPlus that is. It’s not so much the need for somethign like this: it’s how it does it. Registry patch? Nah. Group Policy template? uh-uh.
It stuffs the keyboard buffer in the pre-GUI startup phase, to push in an F8 and the required number of up-arrows (plus a return) to always start server 2008 in unsigned driver mode.
How mad is that?
(and it works too…)
Tags: hacks, Server 2008, VMWare Server
Posted in: Green, Hardware, Real World Computing, Software
Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
5 Responses to “ The Virtual Finger ”
Leave a Reply
Categories
- About the bloggers
- Green
- Hardware
- How To
- Just in
- Microsoft Office 2010
- Newsdesk
- Online business
- Random
- Rant
- Real World Computing
- Software
- View from the Labs
- Windows 7
Authors
Archives
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
advertisement
August 12th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
What an odd post. What on earth is a ‘bodge cycle’ for example? This might make sense to somebody, but went completely over my head.
August 12th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bodge may help if you are not a native English speaker. It refers to an alteration or series of alterations which have an end result in mind but which may, each, be somewhat risky.
You may find you get more detail by learning to ask questions more politely…
August 12th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Sorry I asked. I didn’t realise you would take offence as I was not intending to cause offence. I wasn’t actually asking a question anyway, so I don’t think my (im)politeness was inappropriate. The peculiar conjunction of British English with American computer terminology did jar though. Apparently you have got Windows Server 2008 to work. Well done. However will all the mid-Atlantic jargon be picked up by a search engine?
August 12th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
You seem to be the same person who picked a fight a couple of weeks ago. Once again, it helps if you read what’s been written, in preference to jumping to the first negative thing you can unearth. One: the post is in a search engine. Two: It’s not about Windows 2008 Server, it’s about VMWare. Windows 2008 was running very nicely already, thanks. Three: what is your point? Feel the need to be negative but lack the guts to post under your own name? When it comes to the great reckoning, I’ll take my definition of rudeness over your definition of constructive contribution, any day.
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Hullo all, I’ve crashed into this exact same issue as Mr Cassidy did. I am trying to move from my Windows XP machine to 64 vista business. A major part of that is to port over Vmware server. I found the self same set of problems and while the unsigned drivers set is fine and actually, something I agree with it’s frustrating that VMware haven’t moved to signing their drivers. heck, Workstation and Server 2 have them.
Reading the comments does rather lead me to asking Mr Cassidy to write a column on, err, asking questions. I work in customer support and am, frankly, getting fed up with posts such as “question” and the famous “some questions about”…. I know I am getting old, but if one can’t forumlate a concise, but clear and detailed subject what chance is there you understand or have even thought about the problem?
I’ll stop here before I go off on one.
Please Vmware – sort out driver signing for 1.0.8?