Anybody tried Connectix Virtual PC yet...

[SimonMallion]

I gave it a go last night, and tried to get VGS to run in emulated Windows Me running on Win2k. I managed to get VGS up to the 'Loading Game' screen but that was as far as I got. Besides that, I thought Virtual PC was fantastic. The preview release is a bit restricted though, for instance, you are not able to map your hard drives for use in Virtual PC preview, but I presume that you can in the full version. You can 'Capture' you cd-rom drives and floppy drives, which basically allows Virtual PC to use the specified drives (if you want to copy stuff from your hard disk to your Virtual PC, you will need to burn it on to a CD). From what I could tell, Virtual PC seemed to run at the speed of a Pentium 150 on my Athlon (overclocked to 850MHz), I dont think that even if Virtual PC was able to run VGS, it wouldn't run very fast. One word of warning: make sure that you have a windows boot disc and your operating system on a CD, if you do not have a boot disk you can use Partition Magic or Norton Utilities to make a rescue disk, then delete the rescue files and put your own AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS on to it (dont forget to put a DOS cdrom driver (like OAKCDROM.SYS) on your boot disk and load it in your CONFIG.SYS file, also dont forget to put MSCDEX.EXE on your boot disc and run it in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file). Then be prepared to wait about 2 hours to get your OS installed (yes it takes that long, even though the progress says 50 mins (on my machine)). Connectix are apparently making Virtual hard drives available for download, when the product is fully released, containing pre-installed operating systems (quite cool). Also, you get saved states, so basically when you want to shutdown your Virtual PC, you have the choice to: Shutdown windows, Save the state of your Virtual PC, or just switch your Virtual PC off.

ONE MORE VERY IMPORTANT THING. I FOUND LAST NIGHT THAT SOMETIMES MY BOOT DISK WAS BEING DESTROYED. i'M NOT SURE IF IT WAS VIRTUAL PC DOING THIS OR WINDOWS 2000. BASICALLY, IT REMOVED IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, COMMAND.COM FROM MY BOOT DISK SO I COULDN'T USE IT TO BOOT VIRTUAL PC ANYMORE. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE WRITE PROTECT TAB SET TO PREVENT WRITES. ALSO WHEN VIRTUAL PC WINDOW IS SELECTED, YOU MAY NEED TO CLICK THE WINDOW TO ACTIVATE THE MOUSE IN YOUR VIRTUAL PC, ALSO YOU MAY NEED TO PRESS THE CONTROL KEY IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE YOUR KEYBOARD (I DONT KNOW IF THIS IS A BUG BUT I WILL BE CONTACTING CONNECTIX TO TELL THEM)

Sorry for shouting, but I suggest you get yourselves a copy from preview.connectix.com, it's a 10Mb download, you will to register, and when you start Virtual PC for the first time it will connect to Connectix to register you.

Sorry for the bad grammer, incomprehensible sentence etc. this was done in a rush!

[LanGaidin]

I'm sorry, but I gotta ask... You call that fantastic??? Takes 2 hours to install the OS, runs at a speed that is too slow to run any program created in the past 3 years, and eats files from floppies. Um, thanks, but I think I'll just dual-boot for the few thinks I need the 9x kernel for. :/

[SimonMallion]

Ok, maybe it doesn't sound so fantastic when you summarise it like that, but I still think it is a good product. I didn't expect it to be fast at all, I mean, you still need at least a 300-400MHz computer with a decent-ish graphics card to emulate a PlayStation nowadays. Virtual PC was tested in a Windows 2000 environment, which for me gives me a 3dMark2001 benchmark of only 494, compared to my 2551 in Windows Me, maybe that had something to do with it.

I liked the product because it had the ability to give yourself a test envirionment where you had the freedom to mess about with windows and install software without fear of ruining your 'real' windows. I'm not saying this is an all singing, all dancing solution to effortless switching between oprating systems, but all I can say is see for yourself, you may have different result to me.

[Squall]

I know someone that has Virtual PC, and they say it works great. They said everything works well on it and only a few things have had any problems at all. I don't know the kid too well though. He might be exaggerating a little... or a lot!

[campaign2016]

i still dont get why any one would need to emulate windows from windows
it just doesnt make sence to me

hard drives are big enough now that dual booting isnt a problem
it just doesnt make sence

[tidus]

Also, I'm not so sure that viruses from software from the Virtual PC couldn't ruin your actual OS.

[LanGaidin]

I agree with campaign2016... I guess that's why I'm only seeing the bad in it. Considering that I don't even see a good reason to use it, it would have to be absolutely flawless for me to even consider using it.

[cluthu]

If anyone's interested in computer emulators of this type, they might want to give VMWare a try. It allows you to run a PC-compatable set of hardware in virtual mode. I myself use it to run a minimal Linux setup from within Win2000. Of course, it's far from perfect, but I just thought I'd interject.

[palik_x]

It cool..

[DoktorSeven]

Yeah, both Virtual PC and VMware are pretty cool... I've tested a couple of DOS-based emulators (emulating through an emulator is always cool to me ) on VPC... while not super-speedy, it's playable.

I still can't get VPC to install Linux for some reason (RH7, 6.2)... something about disk access errors. I'll keep trying.

[Phuzzi]

I've used VMware to run linux under win2k but if you plan on doing anything seriously (depending on what your definition of 'serious' is ) then picking up a second hand pentium class box is probably worth your while a hell of a lot more. Plus the speed will probably be better

[DoktorSeven]

Yay, I got Mandrake 7.0 to install... it was slow as anything (constant screen redrawing in X [KDE] made anything run sloooooowww).

No doubt that if I want to seriously use another OS, I'll build me another machine and run it from there, but running Linux or WinXP or whatever in a window on your main pc is pretty nifty

Originally posted by DoktorSeven
Yay, I got Mandrake 7.0 to install... it was slow as anything (constant screen redrawing in X [KDE] made anything run sloooooowww).

No doubt that if I want to seriously use another OS, I'll build me another machine and run it from there, but running Linux or WinXP or whatever in a window on your main pc is pretty nifty

hey, is that you doc (the same (not really a) doctor from vintage)?

[Betamax]

Originally posted by DoktorSeven

... running Linux or WinXP or whatever in a window on your main pc is pretty nifty

There is a new feature in winxp that is similar to this. It enables you to open a virtual desktop in a windows which shows you another user on the network. It is designed so that the admin can fix problems via one fully functional machine. However from this window you basically do anything on that users setup eg change backgrounds etc... could be interesting prank that i could pull on my idiot brother

Interesting thought. If you allowed to create an virtual instance of your username would you get a "Hall of mirrors" effect?

ps I know it has a password protection system.