Virtual XP on Vista

[cooper]

What software would you recommend to run XP on a Vista PC.

 

Have a friend who has a some software that will only run on XP

 

Would free virtul pc 2007 be ok

 

Thanks

 

Cooper

[FN-GM]

I can't see why not, it will work fine.

 

I have been told that virtual box (also free) is better than virtual PC. I haven't tried it myself as i use vmware.

 

Z

[SYNACK]

Virtual PC runs XP fine, better than VMWare in my opinion due to its close relationship with both the host and guest OS. Just make sure you have plenty of RAM in the system. Have you tried using the application compatibility toolkit on your application as that can configure a whole bunch of extra exceptions that will make quite a few programs work, it also includes a bunch of premade templates that other users have made for tricky software.

[cooper]

Thanks for the advise guys, and no SYNACK i havn't used vista much yet still on XP at home. Will have a look at this first when i go round there.

 

Cooper

[powdarrmonkey]

Thumbs up for Virtual PC. If the Bios supports virtual assistance thingys make sure they're switched on, improves performance quite considerably.

[tarquel]

another thumbs up for Virtual PC here. Is great in tamdem with RIS for deployment testing [not drivers obviously ].

 

And yes, if your machine is new enough to support Hardware Virtualisation, then turn that baby on

 

Cheers.

Nath.

[cooper]

Have virtual box running on my laptop to test working well.

[kesomir]

I use virtualbox on vista 64 since vmware wont run on that as a host os yet.

[cooper]

With the VM would the OS require antivirus if being used online or will the main computer look after this?

[matt40k]

I think you would need antivirus on both? I'm not exactly sure how each type of virtualization works.

 

Only thing about Virtual PC etc is the lack of DirectX support. Which is weird as DirectX is Microsoft! I hear VM is 8.1 and Parellels is upto 9. Nothing is DirectX10 YET, I believe you can use the project, fallen leaf or something to do this, they made DirectX 10 work on non-DX10 cards and XP.

 

Anyway that's only if you do graphical stuff.

[powdarrmonkey]

You should install additional AV software on your guest OSs too.

[cooper]

Cheers Guys

 

The virtual XP i setup has AVG running and i have had a call from the friend i set it up with saying that its running out of disk space.

 

I cant work out how to expand this and wanted to check to see if AV was needed.

 

Is there a solution to this?

 

Thanks

 

Cooper

[powdarrmonkey]

I don't have a copy of VPC in front of me but from memory I'm not sure if you can. You certainly can't shrink disks.

[cooper]

Was looking last night, Looks like you can make a slave drive but not expand the master.

 

This is a shame as it looks like i will have to go over again and reinstall it.

 

Cheers

 

Cooper

[SYNACK]

Was looking last night, Looks like you can make a slave drive but not expand the master.

 

This is a shame as it looks like i will have to go over again and reinstall it.

 

Cheers

 

Cooper

 

Treat it like a normal pc where you are replacing the PC with a larger one. Boot the VM with your favorite disk imaging software then copy/expand the filesystem onto your secondary (larger) virtual drive. Then all you need to do is swap the primary VHD file in VPC to the larger drive and your done. No need to reinstall.