MS's new online virtual server-based Vista Ultimate

Discuss Windows Vista/Server 2008 to Windows 10.
Vista Ultimate R2
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Post by Vista Ultimate R2 »

There's a similar thing to this called "Office Test Drive", where you log into a Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise system (apparently with 16 GB of Ram, according to winver!), so I just tried it and had some fun trying out all different stuff on it (maybe it's just me, but I really enjoy bashing away at locked down systems trying to find ways through). It's possible to run various apps from the c:\windows\system32 folder by making hyperlinks in Word (!), but none of the MMC or anything like that seems to be usable. You can also make CMD and REG files using Notepad or Word, but they seem to have set the permissions such that you can't run anything from the folders where you can save the files to. They've barred access to any of the C:\ drive - you can get to the ActiveX plugins folder in the Windows folder by going through the Disk Cleanup Wizard, but you can't then get to anywhere else from there.

Anyway, after I'd done that for a while, I thought I'd have a go at screwing up their 16 GB Ram machine, and here's the results (I just opened hundreds of instances of the Office apps, made some insanely large bitmaps in Paint etc) :

Image Image Image Image

Now that's what I call a screwed-up Windows!

Not only that, when I took those screenshots it was playing various system sounds over and over again (they weren't the normal sounds, I have never heard these ones before), and it was like it was playing a tune the way it was playing them!
Last edited by Vista Ultimate R2 on Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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empireum
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Post by empireum »

16 GB of RAM... *drool* They probably did this because they expected dozens of people to be logged on and using Office 2007 apps simultaneously... Can you get any infos on the CPU(s) this system has? I bet this would be a kick-a$$ system for VMware Server and the like..

Vista Ultimate R2
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Post by Vista Ultimate R2 »

empireum wrote:Can you get any infos on the CPU(s) this system has? I bet this would be a kick-a$$ system for VMware Server and the like..
Here it is (made a hyperlink in Word and found I could access dxdiag) - looks tasty

Image

Here's some more info on the specific model of server that they're using
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Post by Beta Freak »

Web tool bar? Looks quite messed up.

TheWahbinator
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Post by TheWahbinator »

Wow, I wasn't aware that the test drive was updated. (It used Office 2007 Beta 2 for the longest time, even a month after RTM)

empireum
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Post by empireum »

Vista Ultimate R2 wrote:
empireum wrote:Can you get any infos on the CPU(s) this system has? I bet this would be a kick-a$$ system for VMware Server and the like..
Here it is (made a hyperlink in Word and found I could access dxdiag) - looks tasty

http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/6280/1nk6.jpg

Here's some more info on the specific model of server that they're using
Thanks! Dual dual-core opterons, sweet! That box would surely smoke... Wonder what storage subsystem it has... edit: I looked it up, it's probably a fat SCSI or SAS RAID-5 or something like that. OMG...

___
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Post by ___ »

thats a sweet pc. can you use rdc to this?

TheWahbinator
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Post by TheWahbinator »

___ wrote:thats a sweet pc. can you use rdc to this?
No, it uses Citrix servers. Unless you find a Citrix client that will work...

empireum
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Post by empireum »

___ wrote:thats a sweet pc. can you use rdc to this?
It's not really a PC, it's a server.

___
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Post by ___ »

well if they gave it to me it would be personal and it is a computer of some sort

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Post by Bender »

I'd install Windows 95, just to [censored] people off.
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Vista Ultimate R2
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Post by Vista Ultimate R2 »

It probably wouldn't work though, as Win 9x tends to freak out if you have large amounts of Ram. NT 4 might work though...
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empireum
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Post by empireum »

Vista Ultimate R2 wrote::lol: It probably wouldn't work though, as Win 9x tends to freak out if you have large amounts of Ram. NT 4 might work though...
On my tests, Win95/98/ME freaked out with more than ~832-896MB of RAM, I was never able to use 1024MB (which I had in the machine by that time) or more successfully. Speaking of NT4, the Enterprise Edition, AFAIK, supports up to 4GB, but not more. But I bet it would work on that baby...

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