GNS3 - Vista Blues

in CCNP
So, I bought a new laptop for home/study use because my ancient work laptop will not run GNS3. My only choice of OS was Vista, so I took the middle road and went with the 32 bit edition of Vista Home Premium with a respectable and upgradable 2 Gigs of RAM. I installed the latest release of the full GNS3 pack along with Putty and my hopes were high and I was happily enjoying my snazzy new display. I downloaded various IOS versions to try to play with and...nothing.
Every time I boot a router, it decompresses the image, then allocates PMem and IOmem and then...nothing. No error and GNS3 doesn't even freeze, but the router just won't boot! I've upgraded my laptop to all the latest and greatest drivers, I fiddled with the Idlepc times of the routers, I've downloaded several IOS images for various router models to try and...nothing.
Sigh...no GNS3 for me...still. I've posted a post in the GNS3 forums, but wondered if any of this sounded familiar to you good people?
Thanks!
Every time I boot a router, it decompresses the image, then allocates PMem and IOmem and then...nothing. No error and GNS3 doesn't even freeze, but the router just won't boot! I've upgraded my laptop to all the latest and greatest drivers, I fiddled with the Idlepc times of the routers, I've downloaded several IOS images for various router models to try and...nothing.
Sigh...no GNS3 for me...still. I've posted a post in the GNS3 forums, but wondered if any of this sounded familiar to you good people?
Thanks!
CCNP Progress
ONT, ISCW, BCMSN - DONE
BSCI - In Progress
http://www.redwarriornet.com/ <--My Cisco Blog
Comments
I think I will move to plain ol' dynagen for BSCI, but I was hoping to take the lazy way out just to do a little playing with the SDM and some DSL configuration for this one. Looks like I'll have to drag my 1710 out of the closet and dust it off!
CCNP Progress
ONT, ISCW, BCMSN - DONE
BSCI - In Progress
http://www.redwarriornet.com/ <--My Cisco Blog
I'm a sad panda. I think I'll keep picking at it, though.
CCNP Progress
ONT, ISCW, BCMSN - DONE
BSCI - In Progress
http://www.redwarriornet.com/ <--My Cisco Blog
CCNP Progress
ONT, ISCW, BCMSN - DONE
BSCI - In Progress
http://www.redwarriornet.com/ <--My Cisco Blog
CCNP Progress
ONT, ISCW, BCMSN - DONE
BSCI - In Progress
http://www.redwarriornet.com/ <--My Cisco Blog
The download comes with the tutorial file. If you read through that before trying to set it up you shouldn't have any issues.
I'm with networker on the pretty pictures not required point of view!
Tutorial below for decompression of IOS in dynagen
http://dynagen.org/tutorial.htm#_Toc193247993
I'll give it another go after the holidays...I think it is probably more the way I have Vista set up (or lack of setting up Vista beyond how it came).
Thanks again for all the help and I definitely will come back to this after I get a study break (assuming I pass tomorrow!!!)
CCNP Progress
ONT, ISCW, BCMSN - DONE
BSCI - In Progress
http://www.redwarriornet.com/ <--My Cisco Blog
You can install 4GB and Vista will show that it sees 4GB but you can't use that last 1GB or so. It is a limitation of how the x86 architecture works when in 32 bit mode. There are workarounds that let you use more than 4GB in 32 bit mode but those create more issues than they solve. Vista SP1 actually changed the memory display to show how much memory is actually there instead of how much is actually usable. People complained about their flashy over the top 4GB 32 bit machine would only show ~3GB.
If you have a graphics card with 1GB Memory, it has to be able to address this.
So
4GB - Graphics Card RAM = Available.
I've got 8GB RAM and x64 Vista - it really is worth it (And RAM is cheeeeeeeap)
I think I might have a project for after Christmas. Of course I could always just switch to Linux!
CCNP Progress
ONT, ISCW, BCMSN - DONE
BSCI - In Progress
http://www.redwarriornet.com/ <--My Cisco Blog
Your instincts don't lie
I had this problem.
In the end I just rewrote the paths in the INI and NET files and it worked.
Full time linux - it's the only way to roll
CCNP Progress
ONT, ISCW, BCMSN - DONE
BSCI - In Progress
http://www.redwarriornet.com/ <--My Cisco Blog