If you want to try a new operating system, but don’t want to put your computer and data to the risk of being corrupted, virtual machines can come in handy. They are small programs simulating to be a completely independent system with CPU, GPU, memory, HDD, DVD drive and so on and can run another operating system parallel to the one you’re actually using.
There are three major virtual machines out there: VMware Player, Sun VirtualBox and Microsoft VirtualPC. I took a look at all of them and compared their strengths and weaknesses. If you want to read the full review, have a look at the posts below:
In this series, I’m going to focus on comparing different Virtual Machines running Windows and their performance regarding different tasks such as single-threaded CPU-only applications, multi-threaded programs or even games requiring hardware 3D acceleration.
This article will show you when and for what to use VMware Player.
VMware Player is quite similar to Sun Virtual Box. You can also configure almost everything, from CPU count over memory to graphics acceleration. VMware Player can’t assign more cores than the computer actually has to the VM, but features better hardware graphics acceleration and up to 256MB of video memory. This also enables Windows 7 to run Aero and the glass effects smoothly.
I installed Windows 7 64-bit in the VM and compared the performance to my native Windows 7 64-bit. Like in VirtualBox, hardware acceleration is supported, but not required. The installation is even easier than in VirtualBox: Tell VMware Player which OS you plan to install, and it automatically suggests hardware configuration and manages the installation process by clicking the right buttons. After installation, it will install the VMware tools that include 3D driver support and other programs that make using the VM more comfortable.
A nice function that both VirtualBox and VMware Player support is the option to assign devices either to the host OS or the virtual one. This enables the user to connect two mice and keyboards and assign them to host and virtual OS. Now the virtual OS can be moved to a second screen and both users can use the computer simultaneously.
Performance:
Settings:
CPU count: 2
RAM: 1500MB
GPU acceleration: yes, 256MB, DirectX 9
First of all, the Windows 7 System Rating shows that both CPU and GPU performance in the VM are quite good, only the memory is a bit too slow:
To test how strong the VM really is, I ran SuperPI and got these results: It took the VM 0.773 seconds longer to complete the calculation, which equals a performance loss of 3.3%. This is a quite good result, similar to Microsoft Virtual PC, but not as good as VirtualBox.
Since the graphics acceleration really seems to work here, I tried some games to prove it. Older games such asCall of Duty, Couter-Strike 1.6 and Civilization were running nicely, Warcraft 3 had some texturing problems, and quite new games like Call of Duty 5 – World at War didn’t really run (I got around 4 FPS).
All in all, VMware Player is quite good in all fields: CPU performance, GPU performance and ease of use (installation and VMware tools). Moreover, working with it felt smoother than in VirtualBox or Virtual PC, but that may be due to Aero. This means one can work with VMware Player and even play older games. Regarding the possibility to connect keyboard and mouse to the VM and moving it to a second screen basically enables you to create a second, virtual computer that allows another user to work, play or watch movies on the same hardware at the same time.
In this series, I’m going to focus on comparing different Virtual Machines running Windows and their performance regarding different tasks such as single-threaded CPU-only applications, multi-threaded programs or even games requiring hardware 3D acceleration.
This article will show you when and for what to use Sun VirtualBox.
For these tests, I used a quite uncommon configuration: I ran a virtual Windows 7 on my native Windows 7. Most users probably won’t do this, but there is a reason why I chose this OS configuration: Sun VirtualBox allows you to use more CPU cores than you actually have.
The OS installation with Virtual Box is quite easy, just insert your install DVD into the real drive, create a new VM with the hardware configuration you like and tell VirtualBox which OS you’re planning to install. Then allocate your DVD to the VM and start the installation. Worked greatly with Linux, Windows XP and Windows 7 and VirtualBox automatically installed its tools to enable automatic mouse grabbing and this kind of stuff.
In contrast to Microsoft Virtual PC, VirtualBox comes with GPU acceleration, but only allows you to use up to 128MB of video memory. Moreover, the drivers are still beta, so the performance is not as good as you would like it to be.
Performance:
For this test, I didn’t choose settings that any serious user would try, but decided to test the option of using 8 cores.
Settings:
CPU count: 8
RAM: 2048MB
GPU acceleration: yes, 128MB video memory
I searched for a benchmarking program that can use any number of threads and found wPrime. Since it can be scaled to 4 or 8 cores, it was capable of running on both my real quad-core and on the virtual octo-core and still using all the cores.
The virtual octo-core was 0.303 seconds slower, which equals 1.9% performance loss. This is quite surprising when you consider that four of the cores are just simulated and the real OS and processor have to split up the work somehow. These results are even better than the ones I got from Microsoft Virtual PC where the performance loss was about 3.9%.
Hardware graphics acceleration should be there, but don’t expect too much. The drivers are still beta, the video memory is just 128MB and the graphics performance of VMs has never been close to the CPU performance. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the DirectX acceleration to work, neither on Windows 7 64-bit nor on Windows XP 32-bit. That’s a pity because the only VM supporting graphics acceleration is VMware Player then.
All in all, VirtualBox is a really nice tool due to its possiblities of configuration such as using 8 cores, its easy installation and the CPU performance. There is no such feature as direct integration into the host OS as with Virtual PC, but nobody would expect such a feature, and the graphics power isn’t that awesome either, but still better than other VMs supplying just a standard VGA adapter without hardware acceleration or DirectX support.
As Google Chrome has been the fastest browser for a while and the alpha version of Opera 10.50 caught up quite well with Chrome’s performance but didn’t beat it yet, I decided to check the benchmark results given in the blog post by Opera. I ran all the benchmarks with the same settings as Opera did and also tested all four browsers. The only difference is that I used Chrome 5 (alpha) instead of Chrome 4 which is justified since Opera is also using non-stable builds of their browser. I summed up all the benchmark results in a diagram quite similar to the one used by Opera in order to make comparison easier:
The diagram published by Opera looks like this:
As you can see, the latest version of Opera really beats Chrome in Peacekeeper and Dromaeo, but Chrome is far ahead in both Sunspider and V8. I ran all the benchmarks several times to verify my test results and they are perfectly valid, but still differ from the ones published by Opera somehow. Now one has to ask why there is such a big difference regarding Sunspider and whether Opera faked its scores or the latest version of Chrome really improved in this sector.
All in all, it’s quite clear that Opera is really trying to beat all other browsers when concerning JavaScript performance and manages to catch up with Chrome. It will be interesting to see whether the final version of Opera 10.50 will beat Chrome in all tests or not.
In contrast to Opera, I want my benchmark results to be rock-solid and not to be challenged, so I took screenshots of each result and also created an Excel file that contains all results and the calculations made to create the diagram. You can download the screenshots and the Excel file to check my results.
The latest version of Google Chrome, build 5.0.317.2, brings a new feature to improve the browsing experience when visiting foreign websites. It includes an automatic page translation tool which detects the page language and, if it differs from your browser language, offers to translate it to your language using Google Translate.
When Chrome offers you to translate a site, a blue bar will show up in your Chrome window:
When you click the Translate button, it takes a few seconds, and your page should appear in another language. I tried this on several websites with several languages, but it never really worked. Always some parts, like links and headlines were translated, but most of the text stayed in its original language.
Other languages are working, though:
As you can see, this feature is still very experimental, but since I’m using the alpha (dev) version of Google Chrome, I can’t expect every new feature to work perfectly. Google will surely fix this issue until the release of Google Chrome 5 final, and it will make browsing easier, as you will be able to view a lot more websites in languages you don’t understand, without having to mess with pasting the text to your favorite translation tool or guessing what it may say.
A newly released pre-alpha version of Opera promises to radically improve the browser’s performance and speed of displaying and loading websites. The official developer website even claims that “[Opera 10.50] is fast, more than 7x faster in SunSpider than Opera 10.10“. Since Google Chrome has been the fastest browser on the market so far, followed by Apple’s Safari browser, we may have a new player among the best-performing browser.
I downloaded and tested Opera 10.50 and found out that it actually is much faster than before, but also very unstable. I ran Peacekeeper three times, the first time it went well, the second time it was much slower and the third time it didn’t start the benchmark and showed just a blank page. I had to re-install Opera in order to fix this problem. But please keep in mind that this is a pre-alpha release and not meant for everyday use.
In comparison to Chrome 5.0.307.1, Opera 10.50 lost by 12.8%, which is actually a big improvement compared to Chrome 2.0.170 and Opera 9.64, where Opera lost by 60.2%. Safari, once the fastest browser, scored 28.6% less than Chrome, thus giving up its second place to Opera.
Considering the fact that Opera is still pre-alpha and that the development team will improve it before releasing the final version, one can expect Opera’s Peacekeeper score to increase again, bringing it dangerously close to Chrome.
Yesterday evening, the Closed Beta of Battlefield Bad Company 2 started. I managed to secure a beta key and get the game installer and immediately started testing. First of all, a few screenshots and performance information, but more information and a video will follow! There is a torrent download for Battlefield Bad Company 2 that’s working quite well in contrast to the official EA servers or other mirrors that are really overloaded and keep crashing all the time.
The beta supports multiplayer and includes only the gamemode “Rush” with the map “Port Valdez”. Official sources say:
The Battlefield: Bad Company 2 PC beta will feature Port Valdez, a new vehicle focused map where up to 32 players will compete against each other as either the US or Russian armies in the game’s Rush multiplayer mode. Players will have access to five land and three air vehicles where the Russian side can use everything in their arsenal including Main Battle Tanks as well as the fast-moving Quad Bikes and Mobile Armored AA. The fight will also be packed with plenty of infantry combat fought alongside the waterline towards a great oil industrial landscape in the Alaskan mountains.
Being based on the new Frostbite Engine, the game has quite high system requirements:
Recommended Frostbite PC Specifications for BFBC2 & BF1943:
Processor: Quadcore
Main memory: 2GB
Graphics card: GeForce GTX 260
Graphics memory: 512MB
Especially explosions are really nice in this game, thus I created a “flip-book” of pictures (click to enlarge):
If you forgot your your Windows account password, it got hacked or some virus changed it so you’re not able to access your computer any more, you can use the following tutorial to restore and reset the password. This method will also work for Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP and Windows Vista!
WARNING: Please do not use this method for illegal activity such as hacking passwords without the other user’s consent!
Your Windows passwords are stored in the Windows registry. In order to reset them, you need access to this registry without running Windows. Luckily, there is a tool called “Offline NT Password & Registry Editor” which contains a small Linux kernel and drivers for your hard drives. Download the tool from this server or the official website.
Extract the RAR archive. Now you need to create a bootable device in order to run the tool: Using a CD: Just burn the ISO file to any empty CD and proceed. Using a USB memory stick:
Format the memory stick in FAT32 format (rightclick it and choose “Format”) and enable “Quick Format”. WARNING: When formatting, all data in the memory stick will be lost!
Open the ISO file with WinRAR (or any similar program) and extract all files onto the memory stick.
Start the console (Press WINDOWS + R and type cmd, press ENTER), enter the drive letter of your memory stick (e.g. L: ), then enter “SYSLINUX.EXE -ma L:” (replace L: with your drive letter). This will set the boot record for your memory stick, enabling your computer to use it as boot device.
Now plug in the USB memory stick or insert the CD into the drive of the password-locked computer and switch it on.
When the BIOS image is showing up, make sure you enter the “Boot Menu”, usually by pressing F12.
A window should pop up asking you to choose the device to boot from. Select CD or USB HDD.
After a few seconds, this screen will show up. Just press enter to boot normally.
Now a lot of text will appear on your screen while the system is loading drivers for your hardware. Just wait until it comes to a stop and waits for your input. Now the tool is asking on which partition your Windows registry files are located. Usually, this would be the first partition, but since there is a small (100MB) backup drive in Windows 7, you should take the next one, enter the number below and press enter.
Next, it asks for the path to your registry files on the drive. These are usually fine, just press enter to continue. When the files are located, you can choose what to do. Enter 1 and hit return for “Password reset”.
Then you have to select “Edit user data and passwords” by entering 1 again and pressing Enter
Enter your account name from the list and press Enter
On the next screen, enter 1 to “Clear (blank) user password”. You may also select 4 to “Unlock and enable user account” if you have entered the password too often and it is locked. If that’s all you wanted to do, enter ! and press return to quit.
Enter q again to leave the next menu and write the files by typing “y” in Step 4.
Now your password has been reset, just restart your computer normally and you should be able to log in to Windows again!
The new version 4.0 of Google Chrome (currently Beta) enables the use of plugins and extensions in your browser. Extensions are a long requested feature for Chrome and one of the only reasons why many users still favored Firefox over Chrome.
In the Google Chrome Extension Directory you will find many interesting extension, but the one I waited for a long time is one that blocks annoying advertisements on websites. With AdThwart, there finally is such an extension and I will show how to use it. There was a trick to do block ads with earlier versions of Chrome, but using the official extensions is much more comfortable.
Make sure you have Chrome 4.0 or later. Click at the tool button (top right corner) and “About Google Chrome” to see your version. If it’s not 4.0 or later, download the Chrome Beta here.
Once installed, you will see the options page. By default, the filters EasyList and Extra filters are enabled. You may choose another filter for your country.
Now most ads on websites should be gone.
If there are still some remaining, you can use the Easy Filter function to block them as well. Click on the devil-button on the right side of your address bar and select “Easy create filter”. Then click on the element you want to block or hover over it and press CTRL + Shift + E. Return to the popup and confirm that you want to block that element.
If you for some reason don’t like AdThwart, there is another ad blocking extension called simply AdBlock. I didn’t try it, but looking at its rating of 4.5/5 stars, it seems to be quite good as well.
Have you heard about Google’s upcoming operating system ChromeOS and are willing to test it on your computer? Then follow this guide to make it working! ChromeOS is intended to include only the Chrome browser and is only able to run web applications, thus targeting users who spend most of their time in the internet.
Test and use ChromeOS without installing it:
Download a compiled release of ChromeOS. This is the easiest way, you may of course compile it on your own, but that is not part of this tutorial. Use the torrent mirror for fastest downloads. Once it’s done, unpack the image file (ChromeOS-Cherry.img)
Connect a USB memory stick (at least 1GB) to your computer
Download and unpack Win32DiskImager and launch Win32DiskImager.exe. Click on the little folder symbol and select your image file unpacked in step 1. Select the proper drive letter of your USB memory stick in the Device section. Then click Write and confirm the window warning your about a potential physical corruption on your device.
Once it finished writing, unplug your USB device and plug it into the computer you want to test ChromeOS on. Make sure your computer is configured to boot from USB devices as first priority. If your computer is a netbook (e.g. Asus Eee PC), try the steps under Prepare the Asus Eee PC to boot from USB devices in my tutorial on Windows 7 on the Eee PC. Most other computers will have a similar BIOS configuration, though.
Boot from the USB device and wait a few seconds. ChromeOS shouldn’t take long to boot (around 5 seconds on my Eee PC 900).
Login using facepunch as both username and password.
There should be three symbols at the top right corner. The first is showing your battery status (in running ChromeOS on a laptop), the second your WiFi and Ethernet configuration and the third some menus. Click the second one and connect to your WiFi/Ethernet network. This is really necessary since all applications in ChromeOS are web-based!
Enjoy ChromeOS!
Troubleshooting:
I am connected via WiFi/Ethernet but can’t open websites. This may be due to a misconfiguration in your network settings. Sadly, ChromeOS currently has no GUI to configure it, but you can try to do it with the terminal. Press CTRL + ALT + T to open terminal, and go on using Linux commands (e.g. ip addr to see your network configuration, ping to ping other network devices, sudo bash for root user, …)
My screen resolution is not at its maximum. I had this problem a few times and there was no way of fixing it (xrandr in terminal didn’t work and told me that VGA1 was disconnected). Probably ChromeOS has some problems with the display drivers, but restarting the computer always helped.
Flash/YouTube videos are lagging. This happens probably also due to bad/missing video drivers. I don’t think there is a solution for it except finding and installing fitting display drivers for your device and Linux on your own. Hopefully Google will fix this in the final release.
