A bit boring I know, but I AM a geek afterall

Anyone interested in virtualising their Windows desktop applications - for free?

Just been evaluating this cool technology and thought I'd share it.

Essentially run most Windows applications in their own memory space, run multiple versions of the same application on one Windows OS, run conflicting applications on the same workstation... Of course not all applications will run virtualised, but most will.

The best use of the technology would be to strip bare your Windows install, and install all applications as different "layers" using SVS. That way you can activate and deactive applications at will, and never ever have to worry about the registry and dlls again. You can of course 100% cleanly remove the layers, and all components are removed - no need to worry about that bit of the app which won't uninstall properly leaving dregs in the registry.

Take a look at 100% Safe Downloads - SVSDownloads.com for details. Application by Altiris.

This is awesome technology, especially when it is free for personal use!

Couple of tips: It is simpler than it sounds, but still not for the Novice Windows user, and be careful about your Global Exclude directories if you don't want your application-created files disappearing and re-appearing as you decative and activate application layers.

Am using a few Thinstalled apps - brill, no muck spattered everywhere.

Will have to have a looksee when I've the time.

This isn't the same as intel's virtualisation is it?

It is just software based and doesn't require any hardware support for it does it?

I've a copy of VMware somewhere but never actually used it.

Not geeky enough to put the effort in.

I use VMware all the time for simulations and testing. As long as you've got lots of memeory, it's fantastic. Certainly easier than setting up 2 Windows 2003 boxes, a Linux box an AD server, an Exchange server and all kinds of other stuff.

Phil

This is not the same as VMWare.

VMware is about virtualising entire servers / desktops, which has its place. I run VMware Server (free) at home on my server, so that I can run multiple instances of Windows and have an entprise environment (for training purposes) without the initial hardware costs and ongoing power costs of supporting 5 or 6 machines....

The virtualisation described here is from Altiris, and is about virtualising applications on your desktop machine, so that you can install multiple versions of one application on the same OS instance (read desktop PC, such as an XP or Vista machine) - this is useful if you have an older application installed, but need to upgrade it to a new one - but don't know if the new one will be any good or will work with the files you created using your older version. Install the new one into the virtual applicaiton environment, and test it out - without damaging your OS installation or previous application installation.

Its also useful if you download and install a lot of freeware applications. These applications often leave a lot of residue in your Windows OS once you have "uninstalled" them, causing Windows to sloooooow down and eventually need re-installing. Use this application virtualisation to totally remove your apps from your machine as if they were never there.