Virtualize It: Easy Ways to Mirror Your System Configuration
February 11th, 2008 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 3 Comments
Recently, while cleaning up my Windows Registry, I made a couple of changes that resulted in long waits for Windows to load and a few other annoying problems. Luckily, I had a backup of my previous Registry, but the incident still made me think about better ways to mirror my whole configuration, just in case. Malware infections aren’t the only problems that can sometimes cause you to wish you could take your configuration back to where it was before. In this post, I’ll discuss some very good “reboot to restore” and virtualization solutions, including a free one, that can bring you lots of peace of mind.
Returnil Virtual System Personal Edition is freeware that I highly recommend. It’s virtualization software that mirrors your whole system configuration, and it creates a virtual storage disk where you can save important files and data. Returnil’s system protection features also prevent against malware-driven or accidental unwanted changes, and the whole application is designed to let you just restart your computer to return to an optimized configuration.
I happen to try out a lot of software applications, so one of the benefits of running an application like Returnil is that you can install and try programs in a partitioned environment without worrying about making changes to your overall configuration. I also found performance to be snappy across the board with Returnil.
Of course, if you’re willing to pay a little, VMWare is outstanding virtualization software, and I’ve heard good things from Mac users who run Parallels. These products are widely used by people who want, say, Mac OS X and Windows running on the same system. DeepFreeze is also notable for its editions for Windows, Mac or Linux users. Like Returnil, it’s optimized to let you just reboot to restore a previous system configuration.
Most of us web workers run anti-virus and other security solutions, but malware is hardly the only way to end up wishing you could take your computer back to square one. Now that I’m running a completely mirrored version of my configuration, I have more peace of mind.
Do you use any of these virtualization technologies? Can you recommend any free ones?
3 Comments Post your own comment
Chris says: February 11th, 2008 4:29pm
I use VMware frequently for little research projects.
FREE: http://www.vmware.com/download/ Both Server and Player can be found there.
They also offer (also free) VMware converter which can be used to convert machines from virtual to physical or vice-versa. Quite slick.
Anthony Williams says: February 12th, 2008 1:26am
I use the FREE version of VMWare all the time. I have a dual-boot linux/Windows XP setup, and often run my Windows XP installation (off the live partition) under VMWare when I’m booted into Linux. It’s a bit tricky to set up, as you need to boot it under VMware to get the vmware drivers installed, but all the changes require Windows to be reactivated (twice, in my case, but you might be able to get away with just once if you do it right). Anyway, now it’s set up it works really well (if a bit slow at times).
I didn’t know about the VMware converter. I’d be interested to know if it would have worked for my situation.
Oh and a word of warning about virtual machines — try hard to ensure that the memory allocated to the virtual machine isn’t swapped to disk (VMware has a config option for this). Otherwise, if you run anything memory hungry in the VM, the virtual OS will swap to the virtual disk, and the host OS will swap to the physical disk, and your system will grind to a halt with all the disk thrashing. If necessary, reduce the size of the virtual machine’s memory, and give it a big virtual swap file.
Web Worker Daily » Archive Virtualize It: Easy Ways to Mirror Your System Configuration « says: February 19th, 2008 12:17pm
[...] Web Worker Daily » Archive Virtualize It: Easy Ways to Mirror Your System Configuration « Returnil Virtual System Personal Edition is freeware that I highly recommend. It’s virtualization software that mirrors your whole system configuration, and it creates a virtual storage disk where you can save important files and data. Returnil’s system protection features also prevent against malware-driven or accidental unwanted changes, and the whole application is designed to let you just restart your computer to return to an optimized configuration. [...]