Posted on Friday, 7th August 2009 by Heiko
Currently my focus lies within the virtualization of applications due to it being the subject of my graduation paper. I am comparing several application virtualization products like Citrix XenApp, InstallFree Bridge, VMware ThinApp, Microsoft App-V, etc. and trying to give an advice on what product to use in certain client situations.
During this project I am using VMware Workstation a lot to build some small lab setups, containing some standard virtual machines (Active Directory servers, package build servers, clients, etc.). Before I was about to begin building the different labs, I realized it would be very useful to first build some template virtual machines which I call “Golden VM’s”. The purpose of building those VM’s was to build them in such a way they could be cloned infinitely and they should still be very easy to setup. I won’t bother you with standard stuff like the standard settings of VMware Workstation or how to install Windows XP, but just a list with tweaks and things to think of to make the template VM as general as possible.
The settings/tweaks I used to build my “Golden Windows XP SP3 image” in chronological order:
- The first time you boot, boot into the bios and disable the serial and parallel ports:
- Also change the boot order so CD-ROM is on top
- After installing Windows XP, you edit the settings of the virtual machine by disconnecting the image-file(s) and set them both to “Use physical drive: Auto detect”:
- After you booted again, there are some quick wins, like:
- Got to the Performance Options settings (My Computer –> Properties –> Advanced –> Performance –> Settings) to change the Visual Effects to “Custom (with all disabled, except):
- Smooth edges of screen fonts
- Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop
- The second tab is called Advanced, the place where you disable the paging file. On the bottom of that tab there is a Change-button. Click on it and check the “No paging file” option and press “Set”.
- Go back to the System Properties –> Advanced tab and disable error reporting (My Computer –> Properties –> Advanced –> Error Reporting and check “Disable error reporting”). Also uncheck the notify box:
- On the advanced tab you need to disable the “Send an administrative alert” setting and set the debugging information to “none” (My Computer –> Properties –> Advanced –> Startup and Recovery –> Settings)
- Turn off System Restore on the System Restore tab (My Computer –> Properties –> System Restore)
- Disable the Remote options on the Remote tab (My Computer –> Properties –> Remote)
- Turn off Automatic Updates on the Automatic Updates tab (My Computer –> Properties –> Automatic Updates)
- Disable the screensaver
- Remove Windows components like MSN Explorer, Games, Outlook Express, Windows Messenger (Control Panel –> Add or Remove Programs –> Add/Remove Windows Components)
- Disable some services by right clicking on My Computer en choose for Manage. Go to Services, right click on the following services, choose Properties and disable them:
- Error Reporting Service
- Help and Support
- Themes
- Disable the Language bar by right clicking on it and go to Settings. Also on the Advanced tab you check the Turn off advanced text services box.
- Right-click on the desktop and go to Properties. Go to the Desktop tab and click Customize Desktop, uncheck the Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days and click OK.
- Enable ClearType screen font by right click on the Desktop and choose Properties. Go to Appearance –> Effects and click on the drop-down box next to the Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts option and set it to ClearType.
- Enable the Quick Launch bar by right clicking on the taskbar, go to Toolbars and choose Quick Launch.
- Open up a Explorer window by clicking on My Computer. Change the view to Details by choosing it under the View button on the menu bar. On top of the window there is also a Tools button. Click on it and go to the Folder Options option. On the second tab you have to click the Apply to All Folders option and click Yes.
- Right click on the VMware tools icon in the systray and set it to sync time with the host and disable the windows time syncing by double clicking the clock and go to the last tab. Uncheck the option to sync with time.windows.com.
- Got to the Performance Options settings (My Computer –> Properties –> Advanced –> Performance –> Settings) to change the Visual Effects to “Custom (with all disabled, except):
- After tweaking all the little things Windows XP has to offer, it is time to sysprep the Windows install we’ve just completed. How are we going to do this?
- First mount the OS image (in our case that means Windows XP Professional SP3)
- Browse to the Support/Tools directory on the ISO (CD) image
- Open Deply.cab by double clicking on it:
- Copy the files inside that cab-file to C:\Sysprep (you have to make this folder yourself!)
- Start SETUPMGR.exe and follow the onscreen steps, which speak for themselves. Some settings I used:
- Sysprep-setup
- Yes, fully automate the installation
- Store admin password in plaintext
- Short WORKGROUP name (max 15 characters)
- Store the sysprep.inf file in C:\Sysprep
- After all this is done, you have to press Cancel to exit the SETUPMGR program
- As you can see the program made a sysprep.inf file in C:/Sysprep which will be used in the next step
- Startup Sysprep.exe and set the following options checked:
- Don’t reset grace period for activation
- Use Mini-Setup
- Last step is to press Reseal and sysprep prepares your installation for new deployments and shuts down the virtual machine
Now you have made the perfect virtual machine with Windows XP SP3 installed. After you start this VM, it will be booted with a unique computername and with a different SID, so you won’t get any conflicts in your lab setup. Have fun cloning your “perfect Windows XP SP3 virtual machine template”!
Related posts:
- Installing a Citrix Access Gateway on VMware Workstation
- Windows XP Lite SP3 op ESX(i): “Setup cannot copy vmscsi.sys”
- Free shared NAS/SAN storage using Openfiler 2.3 NFS on VMware ESX 4.0
Posted in Tech | Comments (3)
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August 7th, 2009 at
[...] Building a perfect Windows XP virtual machine template (VMware … – Go back to the System Properties –> Advanced tab and disable error reporting (My Computer –> Properties –> Advanced –> Error Reporting and check “Disable error reporting”). Also uncheck the notify box: Error reporting settings … [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 20:56 Omar Shraim(Quote)
This tutorial is truly great and useful. It would be great if you could do the same for building the perfect Windows2003/2008 VM as that is what most us developers use for our development VM machines.
Thank you for a truly useful and practical walk-through
September 21st, 2009 at 10:48 Heiko(Quote)
Omar,
thanks for your compliment. I have been busy writing a post concerning optimizing Windows 2008 to use within VMware Workstation, but the draft version got lost, and I haven’t had the time to re-write it.
Nontheless, I want to point you to some other blog about optimizing Windows 2008 for VMware ESX, with some really usefull tips on how to speed up the OS and remove some unwanted stuff. It’s written by Jeremy Waldrop and can be found here: http://jeremywaldrop.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/how-to-build-a-windows-2008-vmware-esx-vm-template/