Which VM?

Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people recommend
for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP, I have both
with legit product codes.
Also maybe run some Linux Apps, strictly for fun, I need something with
a fairly small learning curve, I don't want to reinvent the wheel or
buid a locomotive.
I have an i7-950 with 6 GB of ram on an Asus Sabertooh X58 MB, 850 watt
ps and an Asus 5850cu Video card.

Thanks for any input from everyone.

Regards, Rene

Rene Lamontagne wrote:

Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people recommend

VirtualBox.

Rene Lamontagne wrote:

Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people recommend
for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP, I have both
with legit product codes.
Also maybe run some Linux Apps, strictly for fun, I need something with
a fairly small learning curve, I don't want to reinvent the wheel or
buid a locomotive.
I have an i7-950 with 6 GB of ram on an Asus Sabertooh X58 MB, 850 watt
ps and an Asus 5850cu Video card.

Thanks for any input from everyone.

Virtualbox. It's free. https://www.virtualbox.org/

Stef

"Rene Lamontagne" wrote in message
...
Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people recommend
for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP, I have both
with legit product codes.
Also maybe run some Linux Apps, strictly for fun, I need something with a
fairly small learning curve, I don't want to reinvent the wheel or buid a
locomotive.
I have an i7-950 with 6 GB of ram on an Asus Sabertooh X58 MB, 850 watt ps
and an Asus 5850cu Video card.

Hyper-V is built in, just go to "Turn Windows Features on or off" and turn
it on.

Seth wrote:

"Rene Lamontagne" wrote ...

Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people
recommend for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP,
I have both with legit product codes.

Hyper-V is built in, just go to "Turn Windows Features on or off" and
turn it on.

To add, see:

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-en...dows-8-client/

On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 Rene Lamontagne wrote:

Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people recommend
for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP, I have both
with legit product codes.
Also maybe run some Linux Apps, strictly for fun, I need something with
a fairly small learning curve, I don't want to reinvent the wheel or
buid a locomotive.
I have an i7-950 with 6 GB of ram on an Asus Sabertooh X58 MB, 850 watt
ps and an Asus 5850cu Video card.

I'm (a 74-year-old) running Hyper-V (it's built in to Windows 8) on a
Sabertooth X79 and it integrates very well with Windows 8. I guess that
your Sabertooth will also be able to run it as long as it supports
Second Level Address Translation. I didn't like VirtualBox because of
the poor display. Hyper-V has a much better display although it has a
very small window, but if you Remote Desktop into it then you get a full
screen and a very good display. I use it permanently to run XP for a
mail program that won't run on 64-bit.

David

--
David Rance writing from Caversham, Reading, UK

VanguardLH wrote:
Seth wrote:

"Rene Lamontagne" wrote ...

Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people
recommend for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP,
I have both with legit product codes.
Hyper-V is built in, just go to "Turn Windows Features on or off" and
turn it on.

To add, see:

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-en...dows-8-client/

When I tried to run Hyper-V here, I was told I needed "SLAT"
hardware support. The SLAT feature goes by different names, so
you even need to research the term first, to find out what
to look for.

Which means an even smaller pool of machines than can run
Windows 8, can run that.

You find out during the Windows Features step, when it
refuses to work.

Also, for the curious, Hyper-V inverts the diagram. It's
not the same type of virtual environment. HyperV is
a Hypervisor.

Hyper-V (runs machine)
| |
Windows 8 Guest Machine
(your host)

That means every Windows OS runs at the same level.
Apparently SLAT has something to do with making
the video card run well, when you try to play 3D games
on Windows 8. In cases where SLAT is not available,
attempts to game would not work well. So SLAT is a
performance optimization, which in this case, they
decided to make mandatory. (Not everyone is a gamer,
and they could have left the SLAT requirement out
and just run games slower.)

Paul

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people recommend
for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP, I have both
with legit product codes.
Also maybe run some Linux Apps, strictly for fun, I need something with
a fairly small learning curve, I don't want to reinvent the wheel or
buid a locomotive.
I have an i7-950 with 6 GB of ram on an Asus Sabertooh X58 MB, 850 watt
ps and an Asus 5850cu Video card.

Thanks for any input from everyone.

Regards, Rene


I've used VirtualBox, but it's a bit brittle and authoritarian when
it comes to changing things in the configuration panel.

I've never used VMWare. (Never got around to it.)

I've used Windows Virtual PC and VPC2007. VPC2007 has the easy to use
interface, but both those applications are "blocked" on Windows 8.
Only Hyper-V is allowed to run on Windows 8.

This entry:

http://ark.intel.com/products/37150/...l-QPI?q=i7-950

Intel VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT): Yes

means you have SLAT and can use Hyper-V. So that means
you have potentially three candidates to play with.
[ VirtualBox, VMWare of some sort, Hyper-V ]

*******

If you only plan on running the machines for a limited (learning
experience) time, you can use the VMs here. You can use slmgr /rearm
to reset them a couple times. I would only burn up product keys,
if the installations were to become a permanent feature of the
machine.

http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualiz...ools#downloads

For Hyper-V operators, there are XP,Vista,Win7,Win8 machines
available for download.

I run a couple of those in VPC2007. It takes a bit of
fiddling around to get a Windows Virtual PC guest VM to run
well on a VPC2007 install. I run them that way, because
Microsoft doesn't want me to :-)

Paul

On 9/23/2013 12:00 PM, Paul wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people
recommend for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP,
I have both with legit product codes.
Also maybe run some Linux Apps, strictly for fun, I need something
with a fairly small learning curve, I don't want to reinvent the
wheel or buid a locomotive.
I have an i7-950 with 6 GB of ram on an Asus Sabertooh X58 MB, 850
watt ps and an Asus 5850cu Video card.

Thanks for any input from everyone.

Regards, Rene


I've used VirtualBox, but it's a bit brittle and authoritarian when
it comes to changing things in the configuration panel.

I've never used VMWare. (Never got around to it.)

I've used Windows Virtual PC and VPC2007. VPC2007 has the easy to use
interface, but both those applications are "blocked" on Windows 8.
Only Hyper-V is allowed to run on Windows 8.

This entry:

http://ark.intel.com/products/37150/...l-QPI?q=i7-950


Intel VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT): Yes

means you have SLAT and can use Hyper-V. So that means
you have potentially three candidates to play with.
[ VirtualBox, VMWare of some sort, Hyper-V ]

*******

If you only plan on running the machines for a limited (learning
experience) time, you can use the VMs here. You can use slmgr /rearm
to reset them a couple times. I would only burn up product keys,
if the installations were to become a permanent feature of the
machine.

http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualiz...ools#downloads

For Hyper-V operators, there are XP,Vista,Win7,Win8 machines
available for download.

I run a couple of those in VPC2007. It takes a bit of
fiddling around to get a Windows Virtual PC guest VM to run
well on a VPC2007 install. I run them that way, because
Microsoft doesn't want me to :-)

Paul
Tried to activate Hyper-V in Win8 but there is only one vm manager part
apparently should be 2, so not able to uninstall it I unticked the
install box and rebooted and it went away.
Next I D/Led VMware and it went fine, am now installing Win7, Will
advise you'all on success later.

Thanks all for the prompt replies, Regards, Rene

On 9/23/2013 1:09 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 9/23/2013 12:00 PM, Paul wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people
recommend for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP,
I have both with legit product codes.
Also maybe run some Linux Apps, strictly for fun, I need something
with a fairly small learning curve, I don't want to reinvent the
wheel or buid a locomotive.
I have an i7-950 with 6 GB of ram on an Asus Sabertooh X58 MB, 850
watt ps and an Asus 5850cu Video card.

Thanks for any input from everyone.

Regards, Rene


I've used VirtualBox, but it's a bit brittle and authoritarian when
it comes to changing things in the configuration panel.

I've never used VMWare. (Never got around to it.)

I've used Windows Virtual PC and VPC2007. VPC2007 has the easy to use
interface, but both those applications are "blocked" on Windows 8.
Only Hyper-V is allowed to run on Windows 8.

This entry:

http://ark.intel.com/products/37150/...l-QPI?q=i7-950


Intel VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT): Yes

means you have SLAT and can use Hyper-V. So that means
you have potentially three candidates to play with.
[ VirtualBox, VMWare of some sort, Hyper-V ]

*******

If you only plan on running the machines for a limited (learning
experience) time, you can use the VMs here. You can use slmgr /rearm
to reset them a couple times. I would only burn up product keys,
if the installations were to become a permanent feature of the
machine.

http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualiz...ools#downloads

For Hyper-V operators, there are XP,Vista,Win7,Win8 machines
available for download.

I run a couple of those in VPC2007. It takes a bit of
fiddling around to get a Windows Virtual PC guest VM to run
well on a VPC2007 install. I run them that way, because
Microsoft doesn't want me to :-)

Paul
Tried to activate Hyper-V in Win8 but there is only one vm manager
part apparently should be 2, so not able to uninstall it I unticked
the install box and rebooted and it went away.
Next I D/Led VMware and it went fine, am now installing Win7, Will
advise you'all on success later.

Thanks all for the prompt replies, Regards, Rene


Windows 7 up and running fine in VMware. Boy that was fast and
painless, all software should work this well, Didn't even have to look
up a manual or help file.
I will use it as is now, no sense trying any others as this so far seems
to be just what I wanted.

As an aside for those who would like to try win8 I have been running it
since it came and with Classic shell I find it Really great, fast and I
have the best of both worlds, I use the new interface for a few apps but
mostly the Standard windows 7 style.
Will install 8.1 as soon as it comes out, not that I really need it but
like to keep up to date.
Thanks for the CPU research Paul, Your fountain of knowledge is remarkable.

Thanks all, Regards,Rene

On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 13:59:47 -0500, Rene Lamontagne wrote:

On 9/23/2013 1:09 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 9/23/2013 12:00 PM, Paul wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people
recommend for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP,
I have both with legit product codes.
Also maybe run some Linux Apps, strictly for fun, I need something
with a fairly small learning curve, I don't want to reinvent the
wheel or buid a locomotive.
I have an i7-950 with 6 GB of ram on an Asus Sabertooh X58 MB, 850
watt ps and an Asus 5850cu Video card.

Thanks for any input from everyone.

Regards, Rene


I've used VirtualBox, but it's a bit brittle and authoritarian when
it comes to changing things in the configuration panel.

I've never used VMWare. (Never got around to it.)

I've used Windows Virtual PC and VPC2007. VPC2007 has the easy to use
interface, but both those applications are "blocked" on Windows 8.
Only Hyper-V is allowed to run on Windows 8.

This entry:

http://ark.intel.com/products/37150/...l-QPI?q=i7-950


Intel VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT): Yes

means you have SLAT and can use Hyper-V. So that means
you have potentially three candidates to play with.
[ VirtualBox, VMWare of some sort, Hyper-V ]

*******

If you only plan on running the machines for a limited (learning
experience) time, you can use the VMs here. You can use slmgr /rearm
to reset them a couple times. I would only burn up product keys,
if the installations were to become a permanent feature of the
machine.

http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualiz...ools#downloads

For Hyper-V operators, there are XP,Vista,Win7,Win8 machines
available for download.

I run a couple of those in VPC2007. It takes a bit of
fiddling around to get a Windows Virtual PC guest VM to run
well on a VPC2007 install. I run them that way, because
Microsoft doesn't want me to :-)

Paul
Tried to activate Hyper-V in Win8 but there is only one vm manager
part apparently should be 2, so not able to uninstall it I unticked
the install box and rebooted and it went away.
Next I D/Led VMware and it went fine, am now installing Win7, Will
advise you'all on success later.

Thanks all for the prompt replies, Regards, Rene


Windows 7 up and running fine in VMware. Boy that was fast and
painless, all software should work this well, Didn't even have to look
up a manual or help file.
I will use it as is now, no sense trying any others as this so far seems
to be just what I wanted.

As an aside for those who would like to try win8 I have been running it
since it came and with Classic shell I find it Really great, fast and I
have the best of both worlds, I use the new interface for a few apps but
mostly the Standard windows 7 style.
Will install 8.1 as soon as it comes out, not that I really need it but
like to keep up to date.
Thanks for the CPU research Paul, Your fountain of knowledge is remarkable.

Thanks all, Regards,Rene

Just as a slightly OT bit of moral support for your choice -

On Windows 7 and earlier, I've been happy with VMware and unhappy with
VirtualBox, but I gave up on the latter too long ago to recall the
specifics.

I did try Windows XP Mode on W7, but found that it didn't support the
programs I wanted it for, so I went back to VMware.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On 9/23/2013 3:48 PM, Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 13:59:47 -0500, Rene Lamontagne wrote:

On 9/23/2013 1:09 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 9/23/2013 12:00 PM, Paul wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people
recommend for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP,
I have both with legit product codes.
Also maybe run some Linux Apps, strictly for fun, I need something
with a fairly small learning curve, I don't want to reinvent the
wheel or buid a locomotive.
I have an i7-950 with 6 GB of ram on an Asus Sabertooh X58 MB, 850
watt ps and an Asus 5850cu Video card.

Thanks for any input from everyone.

Regards, Rene

I've used VirtualBox, but it's a bit brittle and authoritarian when
it comes to changing things in the configuration panel.

I've never used VMWare. (Never got around to it.)

I've used Windows Virtual PC and VPC2007. VPC2007 has the easy to use
interface, but both those applications are "blocked" on Windows 8.
Only Hyper-V is allowed to run on Windows 8.

This entry:

http://ark.intel.com/products/37150/...l-QPI?q=i7-950


Intel VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT): Yes

means you have SLAT and can use Hyper-V. So that means
you have potentially three candidates to play with.
[ VirtualBox, VMWare of some sort, Hyper-V ]

*******

If you only plan on running the machines for a limited (learning
experience) time, you can use the VMs here. You can use slmgr /rearm
to reset them a couple times. I would only burn up product keys,
if the installations were to become a permanent feature of the
machine.

http://www.modern.ie/en-us/virtualiz...ools#downloads

For Hyper-V operators, there are XP,Vista,Win7,Win8 machines
available for download.

I run a couple of those in VPC2007. It takes a bit of
fiddling around to get a Windows Virtual PC guest VM to run
well on a VPC2007 install. I run them that way, because
Microsoft doesn't want me to :-)

Paul
Tried to activate Hyper-V in Win8 but there is only one vm manager
part apparently should be 2, so not able to uninstall it I unticked
the install box and rebooted and it went away.
Next I D/Led VMware and it went fine, am now installing Win7, Will
advise you'all on success later.

Thanks all for the prompt replies, Regards, Rene


Windows 7 up and running fine in VMware. Boy that was fast and
painless, all software should work this well, Didn't even have to look
up a manual or help file.
I will use it as is now, no sense trying any others as this so far seems
to be just what I wanted.

As an aside for those who would like to try win8 I have been running it
since it came and with Classic shell I find it Really great, fast and I
have the best of both worlds, I use the new interface for a few apps but
mostly the Standard windows 7 style.
Will install 8.1 as soon as it comes out, not that I really need it but
like to keep up to date.
Thanks for the CPU research Paul, Your fountain of knowledge is remarkable.

Thanks all, Regards,Rene
Just as a slightly OT bit of moral support for your choice -

On Windows 7 and earlier, I've been happy with VMware and unhappy with
VirtualBox, but I gave up on the latter too long ago to recall the
specifics.

I did try Windows XP Mode on W7, but found that it didn't support the
programs I wanted it for, so I went back to VMware.

Thanks, Gene Appreciated.

Rene

On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 13:59:47 -0500, Rene Lamontagne
wrote in Re Which VM?:

Windows 7 up and running fine in VMware. Boy that was fast and
painless, all software should work this well, Didn't even have to look
up a manual or help file.

Does VMware have a free version? I couldn't find it at their site.
--
Web based forums are like subscribing to 10 different newspapers
and having to visit 10 different news stands to pickup each one.
Email list-server groups and USENET are like having all of those
newspapers delivered to your door every morning.

On 23-Sep-2013 18:21, CRNG wrote:
On Mon, 23 Sep 2013 13:59:47 -0500, Rene Lamontagne
wrote in Re Which VM?:

Windows 7 up and running fine in VMware. Boy that was fast and
painless, all software should work this well, Didn't even have to look
up a manual or help file.

Does VMware have a free version? I couldn't find it at their site.


Free version is called VMware player.

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/fre...are_player/6_0

--
Leala.

Paul wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:
Seth wrote:

"Rene Lamontagne" wrote ...

Running Win 8 on a good fast machine, Which VM do you people
recommend for a 78 year old geezer to play with and run Win 7 or XP,
I have both with legit product codes.
Hyper-V is built in, just go to "Turn Windows Features on or off" and
turn it on.

To add, see:

http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-en...dows-8-client/

When I tried to run Hyper-V here, I was told I needed "SLAT"
hardware support. The SLAT feature goes by different names, so
you even need to research the term first, to find out what
to look for.

Which means an even smaller pool of machines than can run
Windows 8, can run that.

You find out during the Windows Features step, when it
refuses to work.

Also, for the curious, Hyper-V inverts the diagram. It's
not the same type of virtual environment. HyperV is
a Hypervisor.

Hyper-V (runs machine)
| |
Windows 8 Guest Machine
(your host)

That means every Windows OS runs at the same level.
Apparently SLAT has something to do with making
the video card run well, when you try to play 3D games
on Windows 8. In cases where SLAT is not available,
attempts to game would not work well. So SLAT is a
performance optimization, which in this case, they
decided to make mandatory. (Not everyone is a gamer,
and they could have left the SLAT requirement out
and just run games slower.)

Yeah, I was wondering what Microsoft was doing in adding Hyper-V into
Windows 8. My experience with Hyper-V was as a hypervisor (the VM
manager) *under* which you ran every OS as a guest. Hyper-V was free
from Microsoft but even it had some decent hardware requirements so that
performance of the virtualized guests was decent enough to use in an
enterprise setup, like where you ran Hyper-V to test on multiple
operating systems like you could with VMWare ES. Although it used
Windows 2008/2012 Server as its base OS, it was stripped down to just
what was needed to handle the Hyper-V VMM so Microsoft wasn't giving you
a complete Windows 2008 Server product. Of course, for each Microsoft
guest you were required to purchase a valid license for it, so Microsoft
simply saw it as another sales tool.

Alas, since you would be running Windows 8 also as a guest under Hyper-V
means there would be an impact on performance and/or responsiveness of
that guest. Virtualized guests always run slower. Didn't matter if you
used Microsoft's Hyper-V or VMware's Vsphere/ESXi.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/dchung/ar...uirements.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extende...ed_Page_Tables
says it takes the Intel i3/i5/i7 processors to have SLAT (Second Level
Address Translation) hardware features, so my old Intel Core2 Quad Core
doesn't qualify (unless, according to the article, I run slower without
SLAT). I don't know that EPT is going to show as a separate option from
the BIOS option of enabling/disabled Virtual Hardware Assist option
(VTx/VTd). For the Intel i3/i5/i7, the BIOS might just gang all
hardware virtualizing features together: all on or all off.

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_ESX_Intel-EPT-eval.pdf shows that SLAT in
the later CPUs really does improve performance (but it still isn't going
to be the same as direct/real hardware access).