Actually, the major "Ibm" computer manufacturers have been doing this for some time- Especially Gateway and Dell. When I am working on a PC and the OS turns out to be corrupt, like this VM problem originally described in this post... I check out the rest of the functions, and if the machine is not too bad off, I'll simply boot up in Safe Mode (Without networking) and I update to windows XP Pro Corp, that I take off a CD that has 6 versions of XP on it.Alot of PC's sold from OEM's such as Compaq, Dell, Gateway..etc. Are no longer including a full version of the OS. They are using modified versions which do system checks to ensure that the copy is ONLY installed on the PC it was designed for. This keeps costs down, and in a small way helps eliminate software piracy.
XP Pro Corp has the stuff that is missing from the Home Edition, and it does not have that activation crud on it. Usually, after the upgrade, everything works as normal... And so I just do Windows Update and get the critical Updates.
Sometimes, though, I have a machine that is very hosed: And normnally these are Home Edition versions, and the computers, are DELL or Gateway, and all they have is a "recovery CD" - and this wipes the hard drive and re-installs what was there when the machine was new.
Well, tough luck if you want to save any documents, or any other work you have been doing...
So what I do is that I make sure I know exactly what version of Windows XP is on the machine, and I use the appropriate Install CD... If you boot up off the CD, and start the setup procedure, and AFTER you press F8 the installer searches for previous installations: It usually finds the installation, and then you just do ahead with "repair this installation of XP"
And so far this has been working very well... I have done it about 100 times and out of that, maybe 3 times the install was so messed up that I had to back up and reformat the hard drive.
So, I would say, go with Windows XP Pro or Corp, if you can find it for a reasonable price- I don't know what MS thinks of me buying used XP cd's, but that is where I got all my OS installers.
I don't know what the solution is: I work on machines that have anything from Windows 3.11 to Windows Server 2003 installed, and I have to be able to operate on these systems.
Anyway: Here are a few links to Microsoft VM:
(Untested)
http://www.download.support.safetec.net/ms...86/msjavx86.exe (right click and save as, do NOT run!
here are a bunch:
http://www.filesearching.com/cgi-bin/s?q=m...sjavx86.exe&t=f
Here is a page that has some instructions for restporing the VM:
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA012735/vm_en.html
Here is a brazilian page:
http://ftp.unb.br/pub/windows/virtual_machine3805/
if you just paste the filename: "msjavx86.exe" into google, you will find a whole stewpot of MS VM installers