Today i had to install Windows 2003 R2 + SP2 (downloaded from MSDN) within a virtual machine because i needed a DC for a physical testcluster (if your not into IT, this sentence must be a pain in the ass).

I noticed that the installer just kept on going forever at the “installing devices” part.

Did you know that you can press SHIFT-F11 during setup to see that windows is doing? In this case the ‘add new hardware’ wizard was running.
You can also use SHIFT-F10 to get a command prompt

After some research i found the solution:
1) Reset the virtual machine (don’t boot from cdrom)
2) Keep the focus within the virtual machine (don’t ctrl-alt)

You’ll see it works this time, probably has something to do with the detection of keyboard and/or mouse.

So you wanna play M4A files but hate quicktime and/or itunes? Congratulations, your not alone!

Copy the code below, past it in notepad, save it to “blabla.reg” (including quotes, otherwise you might save it as blabla.reg.txt)

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Media Type\Extensions\.m4a]
“Source Filter”=”{E206E4DE-A7EE-4A62-B3E9-4FBC8FE84C73}”
“Media Type”=”{813BACB7-18A7-4068-AABD-8F8CD57011BC}”

Just execute the reg file you just made, confirm the dialog and try!
If it doesn’t work, download an AAC decoder like this one.

Start media player or whatever mp3 player you have and start listening!