Virtual Machine Question.

Hey Guys,
David told me about installing a Virtual Machine to do a bit of Beta Testing and the like. Now I understand that Real Life grabs people from here, Could someone please tell me how to install an OS on it?
I'm running Windows Virtual PC.
Thanks,
Spock96

 

You can install XP Mode in Windows Virtual PC providing you are running either 7 Pro or 7 Ult. If you are not running either of those versions of 7 then Windows Virtual PC is of no use to you and you may as well uninstall it.

But all is not lost, as you can install free virtual machines from either VMware or from VirtualBox and providing you have the installation disks you can install any version of Windows in either, and also any other OS you like - Linux distros, Solaris, etc.

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

https://www.virtualbox.org/

Virtual machines require sufficient disk space and RAM of their own which is taken from that normally used by Windows, so it isn't a good solution if you have less than 4GB RAM.

 

Ya, XP Mode sucks big time, It might be good for those who really need it. I run Ubuntu 10.04 on VMWare with good success with 7Ult.

 

So delete it?
I'm running 7 pro.

 

If XP, and only XP, is what you want then keep it. My vote goes to VMWare Player. Far superior in every respect.

 

Yup!:major

 

MS Virtual PC is easy to use, you are talking about MS Virtual PC 2007? Not the Win7 XP mode? http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/ vs http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=4580

Either way, VMWare Player has got them beat, where it was just a player, it has grown quite a bit and has many functions enabled that make it very useful.

Another option for virtualization is VBox or virtualbox. A little rough around the edges but improving all the time.

 

Looking back I shouldn't have just dismissed XP Mode the way I did. It would have been better to just advise you that there's no need to uninstall Windows Virtual PC before installing VMWare Player. The big thing about Windows Virtual PC is that it gives you XP Pro for free, whereas to install XP in VMWare you would have to have a retail or OEM XP disk. However, while the two VMs will happily co-exist in Win 7 it wouldn't be a great idea to run both at the same time. That would be a big hit on your system resources.