Last week, we posted about the availability of the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP, which includes Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework.  This preview release is available as a Virtual PC (VPC) image.  Unfortunately, a VPC image isn’t great for showcasing parallel processing, as even on a machine with many cores, the guest OS will only have a single virtual core.

Over on his blog, Grant Holliday has put up a nice guide to converting the VPC image into a Hyper-V image.  Why is this useful?  Because the guest OS can see up to four virtual cores, which makes it an environment much better suited to trying out the parallel technologies included in Visual Studio 2010. 

Note that as Grant states, “This is not an officially tested scenario. Things may or may not work. You’re on your own.” Even so, it’s nice to have options. Good luck!