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#1
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Virtual PC Confusion
I've been running Virtual PC 2007 (SP1) on my Win7 Home Premium for some time now in order to be able to run a copy of Linux Mint, XP & Win98. Recently became aware of what appears to be an updated VM environment for Win7. It appears to be named "Windows6.1-KB958559-x86- RefreshPkg.msu" (and a 63 bit version also) and requires validation before downloading. It states it's for Win7 Home Premium as well as other OS's. What's the difference between them? Will it give me an "enhanced" VM environment where USB is passed thru to the VM? If I install it can I just "pick up" my existing VM's? Should I first uninstall WPC 2007? |
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#2
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Virtual PC Confusion
pjp wrote:
I've been running Virtual PC 2007 (SP1) on my Win7 Home Premium for some time now in order to be able to run a copy of Linux Mint, XP & Win98. Recently became aware of what appears to be an updated VM environment for Win7. It appears to be named "Windows6.1-KB958559-x86- RefreshPkg.msu" (and a 63 bit version also) and requires validation before downloading. It states it's for Win7 Home Premium as well as other OS's. What's the difference between them? Will it give me an "enhanced" VM environment where USB is passed thru to the VM? If I install it can I just "pick up" my existing VM's? Should I first uninstall WPC 2007? Windows Virtual PC is intended for system's whose CPU supports virtualization. It's meant to replace VPC 2007. From the download page - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downl...s.aspx?id=3702 " Supported Operating System Windows 7 Processor: IntelŽ, AMDŽ, VIAŽ processors capable of hardware-assisted virtualization, with the setting turned on in the BIOS. " As for performance, I've never used it as my CPU does not support virtualization. It only supports "reality based applications". MowGreen ================ *-343-* FDNY Never Forgotten ================ |
#3
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Virtual PC Confusion
MowGreen wrote:
pjp wrote: I've been running Virtual PC 2007 (SP1) on my Win7 Home Premium for some time now in order to be able to run a copy of Linux Mint, XP & Win98. Recently became aware of what appears to be an updated VM environment for Win7. It appears to be named "Windows6.1-KB958559-x86- RefreshPkg.msu" (and a 63 bit version also) and requires validation before downloading. It states it's for Win7 Home Premium as well as other OS's. What's the difference between them? Will it give me an "enhanced" VM environment where USB is passed thru to the VM? If I install it can I just "pick up" my existing VM's? Should I first uninstall WPC 2007? Windows Virtual PC is intended for system's whose CPU supports virtualization. It's meant to replace VPC 2007. From the download page - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/downl...s.aspx?id=3702 " Supported Operating System Windows 7 Processor: IntelŽ, AMDŽ, VIAŽ processors capable of hardware-assisted virtualization, with the setting turned on in the BIOS. " As for performance, I've never used it as my CPU does not support virtualization. It only supports "reality based applications". MowGreen ================ *-343-* FDNY Never Forgotten ================ One difference, between VPC2007 and Windows Virtual PC, is the former has a "nice GUI" for controlling the setup, whereas the latter has a dreadful "Windows 7 look and feel" interface for the same function. You can hardly figure out where your VM went. As a test, I think I tried running some Linux VM in there. It's bad enough, I uninstalled Windows Virtual PC from my Windows 7 laptop. Windows Virtual PC, also supports running WinXP Mode. To do that, it had support for Terminal Services and Remote Desktop Protocol added. That allows seamless operation of a WinXP staged program, as a window floating around in the Windows 7 desktop. If you were doing that from VPC2007, you would have a window drawn around the entire WinXP desktop, and all programs would appear inside that desktop view. Whereas, with Windows Virtual PC + WinXP Mode (500MB download), you get WinXP programs mixing with Windows 7 programs, on the desktop. And the windows are drawn as if they were from a "remote session". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Virtual_PC On VPC2007, hardware virtualization support via VT-D/AMD-V was optional. You could enable or disable that on a per-VM basis. This caused no end of problems with Linux VMs, because they would test for this, from inside the VM. And because the code was buggy as hell, they'd crash. The latest Linux abortion, was incorrecting identifying VPC2007 as Hyper-V, looking for Hyper-V disk drivers, finding none, and then refusing to access any virtual hard drives in the Linux VM. That took a whole year for them to fix, and is just starting to trickle out as a bug fix. On Windows Virtual PC, according to the above Wikipedia article, the initial release of the software required VT-X/AMD-V. But apparently that was relaxed somehow. "System requirements for Windows Virtual PC Optional: if the processor supports hardware-assisted virtualization technology such as AMD-V or Intel-VT, it will be used. Before March 19, 2010, such a processor was mandatory." And the latest snafu, is on Windows 8, they include a copy of Hyper-V for free (replacement for virtual pc series of software). But it requires SLAT, otherwise known as Extended Page Tables. And I don't have any processors here with that. When I tried to install Hyper-V, it failed silently, and it was only later I noticed the error message. So every version of that software that was free, has had some complicating hardware issue introduced, for no good reason. The Hyper-V issue is the worst of it, so far (no workaround). Paul |
#4
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Virtual PC Confusion
On Tue, 21 May 2013 10:50:32 -0300, pjp wrote:
Recently became aware of what appears to be an updated VM environment for Win7. It appears to be named "Windows6.1-KB958559-x86- RefreshPkg.msu" (and a 63 bit version also) and requires validation before downloading. It states it's for Win7 Home Premium as well as other OS's. Me too. Thanks for bringing that up. Will it give me an "enhanced" VM environment where USB is passed thru to the VM? Yes, and no. While it has additional features, it also removed support for pre WinXP OSes such as Windows 9x and DOS. See below links for more info. What's the difference between them? Unfortunately, the "Windows Virtual PC: Compare Features" page in Microsoft website mysteriously disappeared. But you can view the archive from Internet Archive's Wayback Machine: http://wayback.archive.org/web/20121...s/compare.aspx Amazingly, Wikipedia has better information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual...ows_Virtual_PC If I install it can I just "pick up" my existing VM's? Well, it should be. Should I first uninstall WPC 2007? It's an update package. Download then install. |
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