Jan
25

VirtualBox Portable makes for easy virtual machine setups

Administrator on January 25th, 2010

If you can spare 15-20 GB hard drive space, you may want to consider the free Wubi installer. This sets up a Ubuntu Linux virtual machine (computer) in a single file within Windows. Of course you need a really great Internet connection because Wubi streams in the 300+ MB of installation software via the Internet.

I use a simpler setup that only requires two downloads. For the virtual machine, consider Sun’s VirtualBox; especially the unofficial Portable VirtualBox 2.1.0. Doing so helps avoid the network driver corruption issues I encountered when I first installed VirtualBox and lost my broadband connection!

Download #2 would be of a Linux version. If you have never used Linux before start small. Literally with the 50 MB Damn Small Linux Live distro (distribution). You don’t even have to burn the ISO file to a CD-R as VirtualBox can read bootable ISOs.

My company uses various Linux flavors for our servers and desktops. The distro and version depends when it was setup. As a rule Linux systems go on forever without frequent human house cleaning like Windows.

An excellent desktop Linux for Windows users is Ubuntu but out-of-the-box it’s missing development tools. Fedora 10 is a good choice if you plan to operate both server and workstation modes. And would like to run a development system complete with content versioning and a test site. Installing these software in Ubuntu is about as difficult as installing them on Windows.

Incidentally if the core Windows systems has at least 1 GB RAM installed, the Linux virtual distros will work fine in a 384-512 MB RAM and 8 GB hard disk virtual environment.

I have also managed to lay my hands on a copy of Windows 7 Beta. I’m looking forward to sharing my impressions with you soon.

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Jan
19

Free RAM disk works on Windows 7

Administrator on January 19th, 2010

Back in September 2007, I mentioned a free RAM Disk software. This 32-bit application (as a device driver) served me well. Unfortunately it didn’t work on the 64-bit Windows 7 RC1 trial I installed on my home computer. And even though I continued to use a RAM disk at work, a TCP stack problem meant the rest of the office couldn’t see my computer nor I theirs!

There’s still a couple of months to go before the Windows 7 RC copies expire in early March 2010. Actually they will keep working until June 2010 but will shut down every hour. Which you will agree is annoying :) Back on point, I’m using a RC so I can assess what software works on Windows 7 (64 bit) before I acquire a full licensed version.

Well if you do or plan using Windows 7 (32- or 64-bit) and want a RAM Disk. Then consider the free Dataram RAMDisk 3.5.130RC9. Compatible with Windows 7, Windows Vista , Windows XP, Windows Server 2003  and Windows server 2008. The software (really a device driver) lets you create up to 4 GB virtual disks without registration. Not that there’s a charge to register for even larger disk sizes.

Dataram’s product also lets you save your virtual disk contents to an IMG file on system shutdown. It can later re-load this file on system start-up. Which is handy for those times when a software install, uninstall or update reboots the system without asking for the user’s permission. You can also choose the disk format (FAT16, FAT32, other incl. NTFS). My 4 GB system supports a max disk size of 3412 MB and a minimum size of 40 MB.

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Jan
18

Use Spyware Blaster to Protect Portable Firefox

Administrator on January 18th, 2010

I’m sure (by now) you are aware of the Portable Firefox application that bundles a complete Mozilla Firefox 3.x version as a ready-to-use browser setup. All you have to do is download the relevant file (available in Firefox 3.0.1x and Firefox 3.6 Beta builds) from PortableApps.com to your systems. Click to run the installer. And save the files to a location on either your hard disk drive. Or on a portable (USB pen) drive. Whatever floats your boat better.

Spyware Blaster (for those who haven’t been paying attention) is a powerful anti-spyware protection application. The free for personal user version should work for 99% of all users. Unlike other security tools, Spyware Blaster protects you before the fact. Blocking cookies, dialers, ActiveX controls and known spyware web sites from your browsers. The existing 4.2 build protects Windows, Internet Explorer and Firefox. As the Opera web browser doesn’t use DOM it’s quite secured against most malware.

The problem with Spyware Blaster is it can’t detect Portable Firefox since the latter isn’t installed; mere extracted. So we need to implement a workaround. Read this Wilder Security thread for the details.

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