Regarding the Modern.IE Tester VM’s

I’ve spend much of the weekend building and tweaking the various Internet Explorer | modern.IE Virtual Machine builds. I went with the VMware Player versions as I tend to use that platform for Windows systems while using VirtualBox for Linux machines.

Anyway, this wasn’t for kicks and grins. Rather I needed to do some platform testing of different remote-control access and these seemed perfect, after some modifications.

Again, carefully read Rey Bango’s blog post and the comments to get a good sense of these systems; Making Internet Explorer Testing Easier with new IE VMs

Time Limits on the VMs

All of the VMs have a time limit 90 days of total time from the moment you first use the VM. Basically it’s 30 days usage with two 30-day rearms. To rearm, go into a command prompt with Administrator privileges and type in “slmgr –rearm”

At the end of the 90 days, you’ll be able to use the VM for an hour before it shuts down. At this point, you’ll need to decide if that’s okay or if you’d like to recreate the VM and use it for another 90 days. Remember, you can reuse the same files you originally downloaded to recreate the VM so don’t delete them (unless you just love downloading big files).

After I enabled Remote Desktop access to the first system (Windows 7 Enterprise) and then started trying to use mstsc.exe (Remote Desktop Connection), it would connect…then instantly through an error and disconnect. Remote Desktop Access is disabled on these VM’s by default. I assume you know how to enable them but if not…Enabling Remote Desktop Connections in Windows 7 | 7 Tutorials

Took me awhile to figure it out, but the system was also configured with the single profile account and to automatically log into the account. Once I connected to the account with remote desktop, it logged the running account off, then that caused it to force the relogin of the same account, knocking me off!

This then required me to disable the “auto-login” feature for the accounts. Again, I’m sure all my dear readers know how to do that but if not…Tip: Auto-Login Your Windows 7 User Account | Cool Stuff | Channel 9 except in this case after first running “control userpasswords2”, for step 4 you want to “Check the option “User must enter a user name and password to use this computer.”  Now you won’t get kicked off when you use Windows Remote Desktop Connection to reach it.

Of course, if you do that, you will now need to enter the default password for these systems.  You do know the default user account password for the VM’s right? No?

I found it clearly documented in this provided PDF: Modern.IE VM Notes - 6-24-2013. The PDF is interesting as the file name says 06-27-2013 but the internal document date is 06-24-2013. Oh well. Here is another earlier version as well: Modern.IE VM Notes. Rey Bango actually references the first one in his post if you can find it in the last sentence of the last paragraph of his “Installing the VMs” section.

What else…Oh…as I was setting these up in VMWare Player, for one of them I somehow configured it to use Home Groups. Oopsie.  It ended up creating a non-delete-able HomeGroup icon on my host desktop. Hmmm. Followed this tip from “reminore reminore” to get it cleared off: Unable to remove Homegroup Icon - Microsoft Community. There are a couple of techniques in the post but this did it simply for me.

This worked for me win 7 - 64 bit home premium
1) Drive to "Folder Options"
2) Click "View"
3) Scroll down to "Use Sharing Wizard (Recommended)" it must be checked
4) Un-Check  the Check -box
5) Click "Apply"......the Icon will be removed from your desktop
6) Re-Check the Check-box .....the icon will not be back

HomeGroup Desktop Icon - Add or Remove - Windows 7 Help Forums has some additional pre-packaged .REG file fixes if that is your thing, or the above doesn’t work.

One last tip. Once I finished tweaking the user-account/settings and adding some core files/portable apps to it in the profile folder, to make future rebuilding of these systems super-easy, I just ran the Easy Transfer Wizard on one of them to build an “myaccount.mig" file and off-loaded it back to my host system. Then after I set up the Win 7 system I could semi-clone that profile setup to the rest of them with much less setup time than the first one, and when I have to rebuild them after the 90-day period ends. How to Use Easy Transfer in Windows 7 - For Dummies

--Cheers.

Claus Valca.