I found this in the December issue of PC Gamer.  The KB, 940105, has been out since 8/28/2007, but I'd never heard of it.

Virtual address space usage in Windows game development

It would seem that this would be most beneficial to 32bit systems, but there is a hotfix for 64-Bit too.

I've finally gotten some additional content added to the VPC2007 Tech Ref.  I've added some tips and additional OS installation guides.  Hopefully, the guide will continue to swell with content!!

I know this has happened before, since there was at least one post in the MS Virtual PC newsgroup and now its happened to me.

When you start VPC, the VPC list or console shows up in the taskbar but not on the screen.  Somehow the console location in the options.xml file gets some really funky numbers.  Mine were somewhere in the 4million range.  Changing these numbers back to 10 and 10 restores the VPC list back to your screen.

In Vista, the options files is located here:

C:\Users\%current_user%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Virtual PC

Find the console section and change the left and top positions to 10 each...

<window>
  <console>
   <height type="integer">256</height>
   <left_position type="integer">10</left_position>
   <top_position type="integer">10</top_position>
   <visible type="boolean">true</visible>
   <width type="integer">367</width>
  </console>

In XP, the options.xml file is located in C:\Documents and Settings\%current_user%\Application Data\Microsoft\Virtual PC

%current_user% would be the user name that's currently logged in, i.e. if you're logged in with the Administrator account, your path would be C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Microsoft\Virtual PC

Having, once again, run into issues with sleep working I found a new culprit.  After updating my nVidia drivers to the all new WHQL releases from them, I found I had still lost the ability to sleep, but hibernate was unaffected. 

After some additional troubleshooting, I found that the Windows Media Center Extender service was the offender.  I just recently got an XBOX 360 Elite ( with Guitar Hero II ) and was messing around with the Extenders.  Manually stopping the WMCE service allowed me to sleep again.

What used to be a simple task is a little more complex with Vista.  If you use an imaging tool to move your boot drive to a new HD, as I did a little while back, a strange thing happens.  System Restore breaks!

When you try to launch System Restore you get an ambiguous pop-up error:

“Name or volume label syntax is incorrect. (0×8007007B). System Restore will now close.”

Which really means that Vista can't find your old HD and it can't figure out that there  is a new C: drive.  You can fix this, but you lose all your previous system restore points...kinda scary.

To fix, you can run "SystemPropertiesProtection.exe" from the search box or the run box.  Uncheck your old Vista boot drive, check the new one and click apply...and maybe manually make your first system restore point.

I know that the site has been a little slow for a while with not much new content, but that should be changing soon.

My journey back into higher education is nearing it's end for this semester and shortly after for good.  I am looking forward to going back to the "real" world and no longer spend my nights and weekends studying.

I should have more time to try and get this blog updated to the newest version, get RSS working, and make the blog display a little nicer.  Also, I hope to add a lot of new content to the VPC2007 TechRef.  I need to get this done soon to take advantage of VPC's life.

If the rumors are true, VPC will soon be going away...it's a possibility that some client version of Viridian will make it's way into a future SP of Vista or MS's next client OS.

Disappointed with Vista's built-in defrag like I was?  I had purchased the previous version of Diskeeper for XP and like it quite a bit.  

Diskeeper 2007 Pro works great.  I really didn't like Vista running defrag whenever it wanted, so I was happy that DK2007 allows you to disable that and set your own schedules.  Plus, you get that same nice graphical view of your drive defragging, as well as the other nice features like MFT config, etc. 

It's definitely a worthwhile upgrade from Vista's built-in software.

There's a great new book out for Virtual Server 2005.

Professional Microsoft Virtual Server 2005
http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0470109173.html

There's a lot of good stuff stuffed into this book!!

Ben's post about it is here:

http://mumblingtomyself.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!64FFB030F5637A64!128.entry

Version 9.4.1 for Vista x64 is now available for my 3Ware 9590SE RAID card.  It seems that the drivers are the same revision as the pre-release engineering phase drivers, but now there's finally the 3DM management console, and it works great under Vista x64.

Yesterday, at the dog park near my house, Csilla was attacked and bitten by a Rottweiler.  I wasn't there, my wife was out with Csilla, so I don't have any first hand details.

When they came back immediately after and Csilla was limping, I looked at her leg closely and saw a large 1" gash, she wasn't bleeding yet.  I was very concerned and so we called our vet to bring her in there, but they told us to go to the animal emergency hospital. 

I carried Csi down the steps and put her in the truck and by the time we got to the hospital, she was bleeding from 4 or 5 other puncture wounds and I had a bloody shirt and jeans from carrying her into the hospital.  I've never seen her so scared as when I put her on the examination table; her whole body was shaking.

She had to get 2 staples on the big gash, the vet thought the other punctures were small enough to leave.  Csi is currently on painkillers and antibiotics. 

She's mentally recovered today and is waging her tail again as she limps around the house.

Here's a link to 2 pics of the puncture wounds...warning, they are a little graphic. Be warned!

http://www.essjae.com/images/che/pict2524.jpg zoomed out

http://www.essjae.com/images/che/pict2525.jpg  close up of puncture wounds

http://www.essjae.com/images/che/pict2526.jpg  big cut, with staples