Windows 7 on Hyper-V

Here is something neat about the Windows 7 beta release.  Professional versions of Windows 7 (Business, Enterprise and Ultimate) as well as all versions of Windows Server 2008 R2 already come with integration components installed.

But - it gets better - these integration services work with Hyper-V on both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  On either platform, it just works out of the box:

This means that even if you are not able to upgrade your Hyper-V servers to the beta release - you can still use Hyper-V to evaluate Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2.

Note that integration services are not available during the early stages of installation - but by the time you get to the post-installation configuration wizard (where you configure the computer name, etc... - this is the second picture above) you will have integrated mouse support and support for all of the high performance devices provided by Hyper-V - all with no extra steps required on your behalf.

Cheers,
Ben

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  Is there any way to install the VM Additions to test this Win7 under VS2005 R2?   Thanks.

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  I'd like to see a workstation version of Windows Server 2008 R2 (or a developer edition of Windows 7) that supports Hyper-V. It's handy to keep work for different clients on separate VHDs. A quad-core, RAM-laden desktop PC with Hyper-V would make a nice machine for developers.

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  Forget about Hyper-V. I downloaded the Vista VHD from Technet, ran it on Virtual PC (on windows vista) then installed the Windows 7 beta from the captured ISO. It worked perfectly! Not only that, but I dont have to worry about messing up my main vista install, I can test, mess around with and get to know Windows 7 with almost no drawbacks.. Virtualization is amazing.

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2009
  I am running Windows 7 natively on my laptop but from a vhd. All it takes is to replace the Vista boot loader with the Windows 7 boot loader and creating a vhd with diskpart. You can then install Windows 7 in the VHD. Works great but not supported of course.

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2009
  Hi, Geert - can you please advise how you got Windows 7 to install on this VHD? I'm using Hyper-V on a 2008 server and am finding problems when capturing the Windows 7 64-bit ISO and trying to install.

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2009
  ok - I did this to get it running:

• installed Windows Vista Ultimate into a Hyper-V VHD
• attached ISO to VHD of Windows 7
• reboot Vista Ultimate, booted off Windows 7 cd
• used Advanced Options instead of Upgrade
• formatted installation drive which has Vista installed
• installed Windows 7 this installs a fresh full copy of Windows 7 via Hyper-V if you were experiencing the install.wim / OSImage problem.

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2009
  If anybody wants to install Windows 7 under Virtual PC 2007 I wrote a similar post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/briankel/archive/2009/01/10/installing-the-windows-7-beta-with-virtual-pc-2007-sp1.aspx

• Anonymous
  January 16, 2009
  Mark - Yes, this works as long as you have the latest version of Virtual Server / Virtual PC. Kjopc - There are a number of things that need to be addressed before this is even considerable. dkyeager - This is a known issue - the event log entries are wrong, and should be ignored. Cheers, Ben

• Anonymous
  February 05, 2009
  Any idea how you can enable audio properly when Windows 7 runs in Hyper-V?  I realize there is no audio adapter nor need on my server physically, however, I'd like to host some Desktop VMs within Hyper-V.  I was expecting to be able to redirect audio when I connect in via RDP, however, I can't figure out why this isn't working.  The Windows Audio service is running.  When I play sounds, the mixer shows "output", however, nothing is pushed to my clients.  Any advice?  Anyone get this to work?

• Anonymous
  May 27, 2010
  I am trying to get XP Mode to work in Windows 7 running in Hyper-V. The installation went ok, but when I try to start XP Mode, it says no hardware virtualization is available so it can't start. Hardware Manager, however, tells me that I have an i7-920 Intel processor. What am I missing? Did I not read something important?

• Anonymous
  May 27, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2010
  Ben--  I ended up finding out what it was!  Turns out my lack of audio on my Hyper-V VM was occurring only from the RDC Client for Mac.  I had not connected the fact that the audio wasn't working when connected from one of the Dev Macs (our company produces both Windows and Mac software).  When I connected from a Windows 7 laptop and I heard a login sound.  Curiously I did some digging and found out that in x64 systems, Microsoft doesn't output audio for Mac RDC only.  There is a hotfix that corrects this on Vista, 7, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2:  support.microsoft.com/.../973062

• Anonymous
  October 09, 2010
  Can you tell me if a laptop equipped with an i7 quad core processor and sufficient Ram can run Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1?

• Anonymous
  April 23, 2012
  Running 2008R2, fully patched, Hyper-V role, best practices.  Trying to create a Windows 7 VM, running the install off the ISO.  Reboots, and gives me a NT kernal error.  I was able to do Vista just fine.  I think it has something to do with the C drive being the boot partition and the D drive the OS partition but I can't check this.  Any ideas?

• Anonymous
  October 09, 2013
  Hi ben I have used virtual pc with xp pro, vista pro, windows 7 pro. they were all just easy apps for operating system. I am aware the viridian virtual was released in 09. I have windows 7 pro right here. after that I will install xp mode. I am not familiar with the viridian virtual pc, I am reading here but a little nervous on how to install my windows 7 pro to my hyper -v on windows 8. can you help.