Trying out Microsoft Virtual PC for the First Time
April 21, 2008 by Jason Bean
Filed under Computers
I’ve finally jumped in and given Microsoft’s Virtual PC software a try. I guess I’m obviously a complete beginner though because I didn’t think about or realize that I’d need to have the installation software for the OS to be installed on the new virtual machine. Now I realize that should have been clearly obvious before I started.
I was talking to a friend and he was saying that I could look for a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) image of pre-configured OS options for testing. I found the basic one for Vista to install but it comes in 17+ parts of 95.8MB each! Which is kind of weird because the initial download size was stated to only be 3.9MB. What’s up with that?
So, I know I don’t have the time to start this process now, but maybe it’s something I’ll pursue a little bit later. I really do need to get this other software installed though and begin testing it. I would just install it on my existing laptop, but don’t need to risk that on my production machine that I rely on daily.
What’s everyone else’s experience been with using Microsoft Virtual PC. Oh, and should I be playing around with it or Microsoft Virtual Server?
I just checked out a book from the local Southport Library. It’s from O’Reilly and is about Windows Hacks. There is an extensive section on running multiple OSes on Vista. There was even a section with running OS X within Virtual PC. Now, I have used Virtual PC on Win XP to run Windows 2003 Server with VS 2005 installed. Currently, I haven’t cleared enough space on my desktop to use it. However, I have been leaning towards installing it on my laptop and setting up several OSes for the purposes of development testing and because I am a geek :). Let me know about your experiences. I’ll pass along mine as well.