Oracle Virtual Machine good/bad?

Moving from XP to 7, I have many useful, little programs I would like
to keep.

I gave up on MS's virtual machine running XP. Seemed severely
limited, confined to its own territory, unable to access much of
anything -- in short: not very useful. (maybe I should have tried
harder?)

I set up Oracle's elaborate VM -- almost. It requires a BIOS change on
my computer. I can do this but having doubts about the idea.

Setup seems very complex: many options, many I don't understand.

Is it worth the effort for a computer USER (not computer expert) ?

Comments much appreciated.

On 10/30/2015 12:34 AM, masonc wrote:
Moving from XP to 7, I have many useful, little programs I would like
to keep.

I gave up on MS's virtual machine running XP. Seemed severely
limited, confined to its own territory, unable to access much of
anything -- in short: not very useful. (maybe I should have tried
harder?)

I set up Oracle's elaborate VM -- almost. It requires a BIOS change on
my computer. I can do this but having doubts about the idea.

Setup seems very complex: many options, many I don't understand.

Is it worth the effort for a computer USER (not computer expert) ?

Comments much appreciated.

The only thing I know about Oracle comes from Greek mythology but I have
had excellent luck using the freeware version of VMWare Player, now I
believe upgraded to VMware Workstation 12 Player.

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/fre...on_player/12_0

It allows my XP sessions access to any of my hardware that XP has
drivers for and provided the hardware has been authorized for use by me.
While XP has access to the internet it is isolated from your main PC.
You do however have the ability to transfer files to and from your
main PC and XP or even between other virtual sessions, like XP to W7
with both in their own virtual worlds while my main machine is using
W10. I can even run a W10 virtual session on a machine running W8.1
with little problem.

True if you want full access you will need a windows license for what
ever virtual world you create, be it XP thru W10. For W1 I upgraded an
older licensed virtual session of W7 just fine to W10 and even did a
fresh install of W10 over the upgraded W10 just to prove I could.

masonc wrote:

Moving from XP to 7, I have many useful, little programs I would like
to keep.

I gave up on MS's virtual machine running XP. Seemed severely
limited, confined to its own territory, unable to access much of
anything -- in short: not very useful. (maybe I should have tried
harder?)

I set up Oracle's elaborate VM -- almost. It requires a BIOS change on
my computer. I can do this but having doubts about the idea.

Setup seems very complex: many options, many I don't understand.

Is it worth the effort for a computer USER (not computer expert) ?

For "Oracle's elaborate VM", are you talking about VirtualBox (that
Oracle acquired from Sun along with Java)? I have used it in a couple
of years but don't remember it was difficult to use.

Windows 7 (not Home or Starter editions) included a license for Windows
XP. If you go with someone else's VMM (virtual machine manager) then
you will have to buy another Windows license, or uninstall a retail (not
an OEM) license from one of your other computers, or otherwise find an
unfettered license of Windows XP to run inside the VM (virtual machine).
You are still required to obtain a legit license of Windows to run
inside a VM.

Is the Windows XP license you intend to run inside of a VM *not* an OEM
license? It must be a retail version for you to move it off the old
computer and into a VM running on another computer. Was the Windows XP
license ever used to perform an upgrade to a later version of Windows?
If so, that Windows XP is a fettered license (it is the base on which
the upgrade was made). Upgrades nullify the prior license. In a chain
of upgrades, there must be a full version on which the upgrades are
based, and each upgrade nullifies the license(s) for the prior full or
prior upgrade version. In an upgrade chain, you only get a single valid
license. With Windows 7 you got a free Windows XP license. Where are
you going to get a legit Windows XP license to run inside a VM?

masonc wrote:
Moving from XP to 7, I have many useful, little programs I would like
to keep.

Try just copying them to Win7. Odds are most will run NP.

On 10/29/2015 10:34 PM, masonc wrote:
Moving from XP to 7, I have many useful, little programs I would like
to keep.

I gave up on MS's virtual machine running XP. Seemed severely
limited, confined to its own territory, unable to access much of
anything -- in short: not very useful. (maybe I should have tried
harder?)

I set up Oracle's elaborate VM -- almost. It requires a BIOS change on
my computer. I can do this but having doubts about the idea.

Setup seems very complex: many options, many I don't understand.

Is it worth the effort for a computer USER (not computer expert) ?

You mean VirtualBox? I use it all the time, and have a number of
different operating systems, from XP to Win7 to various flavors of
Linux; even have MacOS in there that I've played with a couple of times.

Like anything on the computer, you will occasionally come across
something you don't know how to do, but I've never had a problem looking
it up on the web and finding a solution.

Jon

Jon Danniken wrote:

masonc wrote:

Moving from XP to 7, I have many useful, little programs I would like
to keep.

I gave up on MS's virtual machine running XP. Seemed severely
limited, confined to its own territory, unable to access much of
anything -- in short: not very useful. (maybe I should have tried
harder?)

I set up Oracle's elaborate VM -- almost. It requires a BIOS change on
my computer. I can do this but having doubts about the idea.

Setup seems very complex: many options, many I don't understand.

Is it worth the effort for a computer USER (not computer expert) ?

You mean VirtualBox? I use it all the time, and have a number of
different operating systems, from XP to Win7 to various flavors of
Linux; even have MacOS in there that I've played with a couple of times.

You can even run the Android OS in a VM (instead of having to install
the Android SDK [Software Development Kit] and use its emulator). I
recall seeing some place where you could download a pre-made image of
Android OS (in a .vhd virtual disk file, or whatever Vbox uses) so you
could simply create a new VM and have it point at the virtual disk.

I'm thinking the OP is pondering a BIOS change to enable hardware
virtualization modes in the CPU (VT-x for Intel, AMD-V for AMD).
VirtualBox required this at one time but then made changes so software
acceleration was sufficient (for those with deficient CPUs). As I
recall, if you had a CPU capable of hardware-assisted virtualization
then it was enabled by default in the BIOS. Of course, if you build
your own computer then the BIOS might be defaulted to not enabling those
features because the mobo doesn't yet have a CPU installed.

There are utilities to find out if your CPU includes firmware to support
hardware-assisted virtualization. CPU-z (cpuid.com), for example, will
list the instruction sets supported by the CPU. If VT-x is listed then
your CPU can facilitate hardware-based virtualization.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/25679...-in-virtualbox

Takkat's respons shows a screenshot of his BIOS showing the option to
enable/disable hardware-assisted virtualization. Although the
discussion was about using this feature under Ubuntu (a Linux
derivative), the BIOS settings are completely independent of whatever OS
you load or how many you have in various partitions to multi-boot. You
don't even need an HDD/SDD in your computer (where the OS(es) are
stored) to go into BIOS. Takkat provided a link to another forum thread
where someone showed a screen capture of their UEFI-schemed BIOS; see:

http://superuser.com/questions/36729.../375351#375351

Even if not using a VMM (virtual machine manager), like VirtualBox or
VMware Play, I can't see the harm in enabling this option if the
BIOS/UEFI default was for it to be disabled. This just enables/disables
access to the instruction set in the CPU. You need a process running
that actually issues calls to the VT-x/AMD-V instruction set in the CPU
to do anything with hardware-assisted virtualization, if available. Of
course, if you installed a CPU that does *not* have VT-x/AMD-V and then
somehow manage to enable it in the BIOS/UEFI then software would
mistakeningly think that instruction set was available when it was not.
The OP never mentioned what CPU he has or even which mobo he has. No
technical details.

If hardware-assisted virtualization is not available in the OP's set,
Virtualbox can still manage VMs without that. See:

http://download.virtualbox.org/virtu...UserManual.pdf

Page 13 says:

*No hardware virtualization required.* For many scenarios, VirtualBox
does not require the processor features built into newer hardware like
Intel VT-x or AMD-V. As opposed to many other virtualization
solutions, you can therefore use VirtualBox even on older
hardware where these features are not present. The technical details
are explained in chapter 10.3, Hardware vs. software virtualization,
page 220.

As I recall, Microsoft's Hyper-V demanded VT-x/AMD-V support in the CPU
(but I thought they later rescinded that requirement). Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-V) seems to indicate that
VT-x/AMD-V are optional but supported by Hyper-V. Without it, Hyper-V
(and other VMMs) has degraded performance of the OS running in a VM. I
don't know if VMware Player requires hardware-assisted virtualization
but I suspect it can run without it.

I suspect the OP is going to run afoul of the licensing requirement of
running Windows XP inside a VM. With XP Mode in non-Home editions of
Windows 7, users got a free license for Windows XP. For other VMMs,
users will have to buy a license to run any version or edition of
Windows inside those VMs.