Windows 7 + VMWare Workstation

Windows 7 As A Guest
I have VMWare Workstation (v6.5) and here's my experiences so far with using Windows 7 as a guest OS:

• It certainly does boot up and shut down very quickly as a virtual machine
• I set the virtual machine's memory to 1 GB: runs well
• I set the virtual machine's memory to 768 MB: runs well
• Can't use 3D acceleration at all though, so no Aero for me
• Can't run the WEI when the 3D acceleration is on otherwise it will hang during the Performance Decoding test (you can cancel the test still though to get out of it)

Things I Plan To Do
- Try Windows 7 with only 512 MB of memory in a virtual environment
- Try Windows 7 with only 256 MB of memory

The Flip Side: Windows 7 host + Vista Guest
My next task is to do the reverse: install Windows 7 as a physical installation and use VMWare Workstation 6.5 to run my original Vista install as a guest (VMWare Converter rocks). If I can achieve that with little to no problem, then I'll be in heaven.

 

the limitations of using the vmware svga driver

good luck with your flip side project, i bet you dont get such successful results with the minimum amounts of ram on your virtual Vista's

all good fun

 

it helps to have 8 GB of total memory to play with I plan on giving virtual Vista 4 GB's of it so it shouldn't be too bad.

 

I tried the same too i.e., Vista x64 as Host and Win7 as Guest ... @ First I never thought it would run in a 512MB Guest Maching but what do you know MS made a hell of OS which ran just fine in 512mb ram ... now we could only run Vista like that .... anyway i don't have any plans to install win7 in my Laptop but have installed in my Desktop

I was bit confused at first because all these years we are used to normal taskbar but suddenly a fully Dynamic which lets you know how much IE has downloaded a file or WMP length and so on .....

I use Vista x64 and have no regreats using it infact i love Vista and now I love the yonger brother of Vista (Win7) Even More :wink:

I hope i didn't bore you guys

 

Well, the flip side works even better for me! I got W7 acting as the host, with my original Vista install now as the guest OS. VMWare Converter 3.0 and Workstation 6.5 work very well, except for a couple minor problems.

The Vista guest take a little bit to boot up since I have a lot of background applications running in it (upwards of 90 processes!). Once it's running though it performs pretty good.

Another problem is in the graphics department, where I can't get Aero to run on it (yet). No matter, as I have WindowBlinds to fix the issue with Aero not working.

Also, the WEI for Vista drop's for the graphics part all the way to 1.0 .

 

Well, who would have thought this was possible... World Of Warcraft runs fine while inside a virtual machine that is hosted by Windows 7:



Edit: Well, it was worth a shot... turns out I can't run the game all too well at this time as the framerates really drop when a few people show up on the scene. Plus the mouse acts a little crazy, with it hiding and showing when it pleases. I'm thinking its due to the fact that 3D acceleration doesn't work 100% with VMWare Workstation on Windows 7 at this time.

 

Performance on VMWare will improve further when vmware introduces vmware tools (Paravirtualization support) for Windows 7. Grate hearing that its runs well even without vmware tools Think I'll first try it on vmware...

 

VMWare Tools is installed, but it's not completely perfect when Windows 7 is the host. VMWare should have better support down the line when Windows 7 is closer to release. I haven't tried other games yet through VMWare, and I don't think I will as it's better to have them run from the host machine.