Virtual PC internet problem.......

jonmichael23

jonmichael23

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Okay, I got VPC a little over a week ago because I selled my PC and missed a couple of apps that were windows-only. I got it with Windows XP Professional...........it was pretty bad in speed on my 1 Ghz iMac, so I figured why not go back to the apple store and exchange it for Windows 2000 which I had heard ran much better, and it did. I love how much faster things work, I'm even typing this in it right now. Everything works great, I got everything I need, but theres two things wrong and I can't figure it out.

I use MSN Messenger a lot, and for some reason it refuses to work. The problem with it, is the fact that Internet Explorer and Firefox both for some reason won't load www.msn.com or www.apple.com / anyone know why this would happen? I've tried tons of other sites and they all load and work fine, but when I go to msn, it loads all the way but it never gets "done" and all I see is a white page, since MSN Messenger connects to MSN that means messenger won't sign in because of this. And when I go to apple's site it doesn't load anything it just keeps loading for eternity. I wouldn't really care if these two sites wouldn't load, but since MSN won't, MSN Messenger can't connect to them and I really hate the mac version and was looking forward to using the windows version. I'm using the shared networking so it is using my mac's connection, and I have DSL. Anyone else experience these problems/know how to fix them.......................?
 
sounds really weird. Does your mac browser load those sites? maybe those sites are somehow cached or so and VPC tries to access the cache which might have a conflict with the ownerships .. :(
Sounds VERY interesting...
 
Using VPC 6.0.1 running Windows XP Home Edition with both Firefox 0.8 and Internet Exploder I got right into both sites with no problem. What is your connection environment? Are you perhaps behind a firewall of some type?
 
perfessor101 said:
Using VPC 6.0.1 running Windows XP Home Edition with both Firefox 0.8 and Internet Exploder I got right into both sites with no problem. What is your connection environment? Are you perhaps behind a firewall of some type?
Click to expand...

I went to my friends house who has version 6.0.1 today running WinXP Professional and they both load fine! I updated my version from 6.0.8 to 6.1.1. Safari loads both pages on a daily basis, is there even a firewall option in OS X ?, and no I don't have it turned on in Windows either yet. I thought I was losing my mind today, Windows 2000 is NOT the speed upgrade I thought, it runs fine with only one or two apps open, but I tried having winamp and internet explorer running today and it made my MAC freeze, the whole system. WinXP may be sluggish but at least it lets me have more then 2 things open! I went back to the apple store explaining what was wrong and they said to try and go back to WinXP again, so here I am with Windows XP Professional running and it STILL won't load these two pages. I'm thinking about having my friend send me his version of 6.0.1 from connectix to see if they load and messenger works under that.........if it did it would be very, very interesting.

One other thought that crossed my mind, my DSL connects using PPPoE ( meaning I have a username, password).....would this cause trouble with the shared networking? But even so, the fact that a bunch of other sites I've loaded work fine and only msn and apple's sites not makes no sense at all. I'm going to try 6.0.1 and test to see if it works.
 
There are several things here and I am not sure what all your questions are, but I will try to take them as I see them.
  1. Virtual PC is an emulator. That means it is software that makes your Mac appear as if it were a Pentium and that takes a lot of computing resources, so no matter what, it will never be particularly fast -- it is physically impossible
  2. Some people claim Windows 2000 is the speed champ. I am using Windows 98 (SE) and Windows XP Home Edition and contrary to popular opinion, on my G4/2x1.25 MDD, XP Home Edition is the faster. XP Pro has lots of additional features and eye candy so turning off as much of that as possible and it will help some. Not much but some.
  3. Lots of memory in your Mac will also help speed VPC up. Allocate a full 512 MB to VPC in the VPC preferences. Again don't expect miracles.
  4. Be sure you have lots of headroom on your HD. There will be a lot of disk I/O and the more free space you have the faster that will go. Every little bit helps.
  5. There is an industrial strength firewall built into OS X called "ipfw" and you can turn it on and configure it in System Preferences > Sharing. If you are on a broadband internet connection it should be turned on! However, that is not what I was thinking about in my first post. I was thinking about a corporate or university network firewall that for some reason might be blocking the two sites you are having problems with.
  6. By default VPC shares your Macs internet connection and all the PPPoE and other chores are handled by OS X. If you can access the internet with your Mac you can access it with VPC. So unless you configured VPC to make its own internet connection, that is not the problem either.
Of course, none of this explains why you cannot access those two sites running under VPC. Have you tried a different browser? Firefox or Opera come immediately to mind as excellent and free alternatives.
 
I know, I just thought it was funny that Win2000 was worse then WinXP after closer inspection. Speed isn't my real problem though.........

Look, this lady has the exact same problem as me - http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=...ie=UTF-8&group=microsoft.public.mac.virtualpc

Coincidence? I'm thinking not...........she's experiencing exactly what I am, it loads everything fine, and like she said, apple doesnt load at all. And I found out I can load search.msn.com and the my MSN site, but not hotmail, the .NET sign in site, MSN Home, pretty much everything else. Microsoft's update site did load, I tried after reading that it did for her. So basically everything works fine except all of apple, and most of microsoft.com and msn.com

The guy suggested updating the java software, but I don't think that's the problem. However, I will try that as well. I'll get them to work somehow hopefully :(
 
YES!!! Thank God!!!! I got it to work finally!!!

If anyone is experiencing this problem - internet works, but cant access .Net sites, apple.com, microsoft.com.......DO THIS

first close ALL open PC's running, then go to preferences in VPC, then scripting, and click on show scripts menu.

click on your Windows OS that is experiencing the problem, and then click the new Scripts menu on the menu bar. Then click "Set Networking Type". A window comes up saying the script is a troubleshooting tool, and should generally only be run when instructed to do so by connectix (good job changing that Microsoft :p ) click ok, and itll say its set to "shared packet" , say u want to change it, and click "shared sockets" . Run your PC and enjoy being able to now load those sites you couldnt, etc.

I'm guessing this happens to people who connect to their DSL using PPPoE since everyone who posted on microsoft's support newsgroup with this problem was using this kind of DSL. I am so happy that I finally got it to work, YAY! :)
 
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