Virtual PC 2007 on Vostro 1400

I have been in a dilema since I received my Vostro 1400 last week whether to switch to XP Pro or stay with Vista Ultimate. There are nice features of Vista Ultimate, but many of the programs I am using are not compatible with Vista. On the other hand, the Quickset for XP was not available (until today). I was thinking of setting up dual boot instead of getting rid of Vista. After reading something about the MS Virtual PC 2007, I decided to try the VM which is a lot less work and safer than setting up dual boot. To my surprise, it runs WinXP Pro pretty good. I've tried some video codecs that cannot be run in Vista on the Virtual XP. It runs much faster than my Athlon 3000+ with 2GB RAM while I am browsing in Vista at the same time.

Virtual PC 2007 is a free download at Microsoft here.
A nice installation guide is available at Lifehacker.
I also follow this guide to make the XP runs faster in VPC.
An instruction to install Ubuntu is available here.
Detail instruction to install Win98SE is in this pdf.


VPC2007 runs on Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. Most OS (including DOS, WIN3.1, Linux, Win98, WinXP, Vista...) can be run in a Virtual PC Window. It is a great simple way to solve compatiblity issue.

 

You know what's awesome about Virtual PC in my opinion?

The ability to run older games (Like Starcraft or Diablo 2, just as an example) at their native 4:3 resolutions on a 16:10 notebook monitor (Since the "virtual" windows is being run in a windowed environment). That, alone, is worth using VPC .

Since I'm running Win XP Pro already, compatibilities aren't an issue for me.

EDIT: Are the OS running under Virtual PC hardware accelerated? I'd ideally want to be able to run older 3D games that doesn't support wide screen (E.g.: Warcraft 3), but if there's no hardware video support, then that's a definite No-Go.

 

Does the sound skip when you are playing mp3's on XP???

 

You might want to look into VMWare Server as well ( http://www.vmware.com/products/server/). It's also free, but its a fair bit quicker than Virtual PC.

VMWare Server is the equivalent of Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 (which is also free!), so you get a lot more features. You don't have to use them of course

 

Although it works with the XP apps, it may not run well in 3D and graphic intensive games. Older games are fine. All the drivers are in emulate mode and the sound does sometimes skip, but the whole idea is just to run those Vista incompatible programs there. The WMA play back inside VPC has no problem though.

 

Do any of the free virtual machine apps (MS or VMWare) support USB 2.0? My MP3 player only plays well with XP & WMP 10.

 

Yes, all driver supports are present; speed is the only limiting factor.

VMWare 6.0 for sure supports USB 2.0.

 

Link is broken . It's this:
http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

VMware is supposedly a bit faster than Virtual PC, but I myself have not used it so I can't comment on the speed differences between the two.

 

So I've got an Inspiron 1520 with Home Premium coming soon, but this is my main laptop, and my current laptop won't be carried with me anymore. The VPN client I use for connecting to work's network isn't compatible with Vista. Can I run a virtual version of XP and have it work? I was just introduced to VM in the last week, and I still know nothing about it.

Thanks.

 

Yes, it will work.

Windows virtualization on Windows itself isn't some sort of bastardized Linux emulation--it's by the book perfection.

For every bit you input, you'll get a bit of output (okay, that's not true; that's application dependent--but you get the picture ) even with virtualization.

Speed is the only factor (or rather; the lack of speed).

 

No license required right? This would totally solve my problem for VPN then

Can you leave it running at all times? Does it contain fetaures like remote desktop (XP Pro)? Does it hold it's own IP address?

 

Yes, it's totally free (Virtual PC 2007, at least).
Yes, you can leave it running at all times.
Yes, it contains all features a normal XP installation would contain--in fact, you have to do the installing yourself. Virtual PC is simply a shell in which you can install a separate OS onto. I'm not sure if OEM Discs would work (I have a separate Windows XP Pro license which I use).
No, it does not hold it's own IP address, unfortunately. IP addresses are machine dependant.

 

Duh on the IP question. It's late, and I am thinking too much.

However, how is it as far as performance goes? Gaming wise? If I wanted to do something in XP from my fiancee's house, I could remote in (VNC probably cuz Vista Home Premium doesn't have RD ) and do things on XP VM? Probably holds a huge lag, but just curious.

How about software wise? Licensing is still probably the same?

 

The performance is... well, acceptable. Don't be expecting to be running any Doom 3's and C&C 3's on a virtual machine . Older 2D games should work fine.

Remote Desktop should work fine--but like you said, it'll have lag. Remote Desktop has always had lag even when it's not under virtualization. Latency incurred via the Internet is not preventable.

Software wise, I am absolutely not sure. But I think it would be considered "one machine" by all technical means. Also, anything you install on the Virtual HDD will take up HDD space, so if you're going to install the same application on both your real OS and your Virtual XP, it's going to take twice the amount of HDD space (duh). Your virtualized XP cannot access your "real OS's" HDD, and vice versa.

EDIT: Just to add something here: With Virtual PC, you need an Add-on to utilize Remote Desktop (this is due to a mouse co-ordinate issue, not a hardware/software issue). Basically, you need to install a thing called "Virtual PC Additions". For more info, click here.

 

Thanks for the info! I'll start looking into it a bit more when the laptop gets here.

 

I like it so far, and I put it on my daughter's XP desktop to run Win98SE too. It is fine with some games and apps, but it does not have CD/DVD burner or USB supports. The Parallels Workstation does have USB2.0 support and can use external burners, but it costs $50. In addition, I found it a bit slower than VPC2007. My Vostro 1400 with T5470 has no HW virtualization, but the XP on VPC is still acceptable in performance (slightly faster than XP on A64 3000+). The Win98SE running in VPC on a A64 3000+ machine is also pretty good. At least it is faster running Win98SE on a Pentium III. I can also run DOS games on the VPC Win98SE too.

Afterall, it is a freeware. Can't complain.

 

I can set static IP on the XP inside VPC. I just assign one within my network subdomain and it sees all the sharing devices.

 

Hmm, really? I've never actually tried that, but thanks for the heads up .

What you can do is simply make a Virtual Machine image with Virtual PC 2007 since it's free, than use VMWare Player (Which is also totally free) to load the Virtual Machine image and VMWare has full support for USB 2.0 .

 

Thanks for the tips. I'll try it out. I have been testing Parallels' Workstation in the last couple days and I am really frustrated by it. It does support USB2.0, however, it cannot uses the wireless interface. It seems it has trouble with multiple network interface. It also runs slower than VPC2007.

Update:
I've tried VMware Player, but it failed to convert a VPC2007 image.