apple - not everything is lost (homesharing, audiobooks etc)

I spent a lot of time doing stupid stuff again and again and suddenly I google a bit about the things that take time and there is a solution:

itunes9 homeshare -> first I thought great -> then i noticed that it just imports duplicates on the other computer but then I found out that there is a view option on the bottom where you can set it to not in my library or so!!!!

audiobooks - i hated that I had to store all those audiobooks etc in musik and could not use another category but this is gone (actually since itunes 8 or so). Just right click information and go to options and set the type to audiobook, select skip when ... and  keep position

album covert: album artwork asistant, nice 

Windows XP Mode on Computers with no VT

I own a Acer 5630 with a good CPU that contains Intel VT and X64 extensions but Acer decided not to give me the option to enable it.

So here comes Windows 7.

I cannot install 64bit but I really wanted to take advantage of 4GB RAM and 64bit is the way to go anyway.

I installed Windows 7 RC? and then downloaded vpc rc and windows xp mode rc.

When I tried to create a new VM or wanted to start XP Mode only an ERROR messages was displayed and I shall check my cpu and enable virtualization. As I said this model from Acer does not allow this and I haven't found out how to hack the bios settings to enable this.

But Virtualbox just works fine and I don't care about all that speed, my need is just to get windows xp for certain old applications.

Next thing I now is that I have to try to use the Windows XP Mode vhd to boot up in Virtualbox.

1) C:\program files\windows xp mode rc\.vhd
2) elevated cmd prompt: takeown c:\.......vhd
3) icacls ......vhd /grant myuser:F
4) remove read only attribute of file
5) start the virtualbox and create a new machine, import .vhd to library first and then start it

a mini setup will run

and ask you all the regular questions.

Also in my case it asked for a video driver and base system. Cancel those.

The system is then ready and only the 2 drivers mentioned before show up in devmgmt.msc as not correctly installed.

Internet works from the start. Machine looks to be fully funtional. (Virtualbox 3.0.6 used).

side note: I can only hope that the guys from virtualbox make a better seamless mode it's not nice, missing is the integration like in fusion, parallels or vpc.

After this I tried guest additions and since I felt really great I enabled the 3D accelation for fun. (Did a snapshot before that).

Worked like a charm. The only thing was to click enter when asked for administrator password which I left blank intentionally.


Ok, now activation. I DOESN't work. it did not accept it. there is a key provided in the machine and since the hardware changed you'll need to activate it and this seems to break and the key is then gone.

Update: I just switched back to my snapshot and did not install anything and tried to install updates. no luck either. Activation does not go through.


Good that they did this, bad for those people like me that bought a stupid machine where VT cannot be enabled.

When I bought that notebook I especially took care that the processor I buy has the features for x64 and vt but no one mentioned that the bios has to have this setting. I did not think that it should not be there because on my thinkpad the settings were always there.

Ok. Now maybe has another solution to my problem. running vpc without vt would be ok or getting that bios fixed.

;(