You don't need the VMWare Workstation product to create a VM - check out EasyVMX here for a way to create easy VMs. I prefer VMWare over Virtual PC for both performance and usability (keep in mind that's my opinion). It's also handy since the backup is a simple directory copy on the host and you don't have to worry about recovering settings or re-installing applications. I actually run three development environments (and many test environments) under Ubuntu host in Windows guest virtual machines - it's very good for keeping things separated and for being able to restore test environments to a known point. The commercial options are not (anymore) worth what they cost, IMHO. It can also run virtual PC images, so switching was just a matter of installing virtualbox and adding my existing virtual PC disks to it.Īn added benefit is that I can run the virtual images just as easily on my new mac as on the old pc. Virtualbox runs fullscreen on my 1920x1080 no problem. Virtualbox is fully free, and it has better features than VPC2007 - the main one that made me switch was the support for high resolutions. It was a bit rough in the beginning but the last few versions have really gotten there. Virtual PC is very convenient and it was what I used for starters, but I have to say that virtualbox seems to have overtaken it now. Basically you can't just make a copy of the virtual disk, you need to take some special precautions. If you need to do this you should read up on the sysprep.exe tool. Running multiple copies of the same guest OS when it is a member of a domain/AD is tricky.Multiple Visual studio instances, IIS, SQL, Office, works just fine. If you can satisfy the above, performance is no issue.
(This is basically like installing the proper drivers for your "virtual" hardware, and seems to be more important for performance than having hardware virtualisation support).
I haven’t done this yet, but I might give it a go later and attempt to get Ubuntu running (something which was notoriously difficult under VPC 2007 so hopefully the process is a bit smoother now).Īnyway, it’s nice that Microsoft have made this tool available for free, which is very useful for software testing, and even better that its usable on Win 7 Home Premium, without having to upgrade to Professional. Windows Virtual PC adds a Virtual Machines folder under your user account from which you can set up a new virtual machine if you require. This went smoothly, although my virtualized XP did attempt and fail to install new device drivers when it booted up. The final step was to load up one of the old Virtual PC 2007 vmc files I had lying around. I have a Dell laptop, and it was a matter of hitting F12 on bootup and searching around for the option in the BIOS settings. Once installed you may, like me, run into the issue that hardware assisted virtualization is not enabled in your BIOS. You only need to download the Virtual PC part, which arrives as the rather cryptically named.
However, if you head over to the Windows Virtual PC website, and say that you have Windows 7 Professional, it enables the downloads of Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC.
Microsoft have replaced Virtual PC 2007 with “Windows Virtual PC”, but theoretically it is only supported with Windows 7 Professional and above.