Virtual PC 2007: Bleeding Edge Virtualization02/22/07Virtual PC 2007: Bleeding Edge VirtualizationLink: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx Yeah, yeah, I know. I spend most of my time using OS X these days, but on occasion I do some 'slumming' in the Windows world. I do program Windows for a living, after all. Yesterday, I downloaded Microsoft's new Virtual PC 2007. I wanted to try it because it supports hardware virtualization. This means that the virtual PC that you run should run nearly as fast as your main PC. I wanted to give my first impressions of it. So far, my first impression is not good. I downloaded Ubuntu Linux as an ISO image. Once installed, I launched Virtual PC 2007 with the ISO image mounted as the CD ROM drive. The virtual machine booted up and Ubuntu seemed to install properly. Once Ubuntu rebooted however, things got bizarre. The virtual machine window expanded to a little wider than my screen size of 1600x1200 and less than half of my screen height. (1600x400? what kinda resolution is that???) I tried everything to get it to work with no luck. Once Ubuntu failed, I decided to try another Linux, so I downloaded Open Suse. I created a new virtual machine for it, mounted the ISO image again and 'rebooted' the virtual machine. Open Suse came up, got to the splash screen and just stopped. I rebooted several times and trie again with no luck. Finally I rebooted and forced Open Suse to 800x600 resolution. That seemed to do the trick. I left it installing when I left for work this morning. We'll see how it goes. Another odd and really annoying thing about Virtual PC 2007 is that if you choose 'other' as the type of operating system to install, it defaults to only giving the machine 128MB! That is way too little amount of RAM! Can you imagine trying to run any relatively modern operating system with that little amount of RAM? It'll never happen. My current theory is that VPC is having some kind of problem with virtual screen resolutions... If you let it 'autodetect' the resolution, it doesn't seem to work right, but if you force it to a certain resolution, it seems to work better. Why did I call this article 'Bleeding Edge Virtualization'? Because not only am I using a brand new virtual machine app, I'm also trying to run it on Microsoft Vista - a brand new operating system. Maybe the two don't 'get along' very well. I didn't check this, but since Virtual PC 2007 was supposed to be a part of Vista Ultimate Edition, naturally I assumed they would work together. I'll have to try installing a version of Windows in a virtual machine and see what happens... Somehow I think that will go much better. :( 5 comments
Comment from: Geoff [Visitor]
If you bothered to spend more time trying to set up VPC than you did writing this post then you would have managed to fix all of this.
You can change the RAM on a virtual machine at ANY time. You can use up as much or as little host memory as you like by using the slider in the options...it's that simple. Ubuntu WILL work on a vpc, but you need to install in text mode. Why? because virtual PCs don't use 3d acceleration, they use the trio 3 software based graphics driver. Virtual PC 2007 WILL work in vista, in fact - i'm writing this post from within a VPC that is running on a Vista host
10/16/07 @ 13:39
If you would have checked at the ubuntu forums, you might have seen that you needed to install the Ubuntu Desktop in "Safe Graphics Mode" which is a choice from the gui installer.
This will make it install at the 16 bit color rate. Ubuntu by default installs using 32 bit, and VPC can only use 16 bit.... Common Sense is an uncommon virtue.
11/06/07 @ 19:29
Comment from: rekle [Member]
Everyone,
This blog was more a criticism of Virtual PC itself, rather than Ubuntu. I was complaining that Virtual PC couldn't handle the graphics mode that Ubuntu used in its install, not that Ubuntu had problems. As for Vista, I had nothing but problems with it. It was VERY unstable on my PC. These problems with Vista caused me to get rid of Vista in favor of XP, as I wrote about in a later article. Perhaps Vista is more stable now than it was when I wrote this article 8 1/2 months ago, but I really have no desire to try again. VMWare works VERY well. Virtual PC does NOT. Also, on a side note, constructive criticism and suggestions on how to fix my problems are appreciated. Insulting comments such as "If you bothered to spend more time trying to set up VPC than you did writing this post then you would have managed to fix all of this." are not.
11/08/07 @ 09:34
Ok, Ubuntu fanbois... Please have at least a LITTLE courtesy before you spout off.
Rick was writing about VPC, NOT Ubuntu. He happened to pick it to try a 'virtual linux'. It didn't work. Did he criticize Ubuntu? Not even implicitly. He was criticizing the default RAM selection from VPC. Now, for both of the points you raised, neither option is OBVIOUS. 'Install in Text mode'? 'Install in Safe Graphics mode?' Puh-leezz... Why is it the user's responsibility to fiddle with these settings when installing? Can't the darn thing default to a minimalist mode, then add on when it realizes what's there? Things like this make it difficult for people to use the product.
11/08/07 @ 09:58
Comment from: Brandon [Visitor] · http://www.wizwoz.tk
You should use virtualbox becuase I know for a fact that virtual pc 2007 doesn't support Ubnuntu or any type of linux. I have tried doing this and I couldn't even get it to install. So guess you could say that you were lucky getting that far. Also virtualbox runs in OSX so you at least don't have to pay for a program like Parallels. Hope this gives ya some thoughts.
11/20/09 @ 15:46
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