Zings mini Virtual machine guide

This is only a little overview of what a virtual machine is and how it can be of use. There are a lot of dodgy malware attached to some reputable websites and if you use P2P NTTP or BT for example there are a lot more dodgy files than there have been

I use Windows for my operating system always have and unless something seriously changes I always will.
Sometimes though even the widest most compatible used operating system can not utilise all the software you want it to. So what do you do? Format and install the operating system the software uses? Buy a new computer? Well why not consider a Virtual Machine

I will quickly link to a couple of variants and then go in depth and show the install of Windows XP on machine running VistaX64

Virtualbox is free and runs on various operating systems from Windows to FreeBCD to MacOSX
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads it is available for this link as you see it is available for a lot of different systems
Microsoft Virtual Pc available from this link http://www.microsoft.com/windows/vir...t-started.aspx as you can see they are pushing the windows 7 version which when installed with the XP mode add on it is meant to seamlessly integrate apps installed on the Virtual machine inside windows 7. My experience of this is not that great.

Although there are other versions of this around the one I use is the paid for client called VMware workstation.There are versions of this for Windows and Mac I will now run through a simple install process for XP while running Vista.
Here you see the open program all I have done is selected to install a new virtual machine




Load XP cd into optical drive and select it from the menu seen here




It will find the cd and recognise it as XP Add your cd key now and details otherwise you will see the normal menus once setup files etc have loaded


Select where you wish your virtual hard drive to live





Select how many processors you want the VM to see 1 or 2 is available I do not think you need a screen shot of this J
Allocate memory to machine use 512 as a minimum





Leave Networking as NAT unless you wish to change it (no screenie needed )
I leave the hard drive as standard





Create a virtual disk and assign space to it(select drive type I leave default) Size of disk depends on how much you think you will need to install on the machine. Leave enough to cover your needs. Name the drive as required








Time to customise hardware.






Make sure 3d acceleration is ticked if you want to play legacy games
Now click next and the machine will start




If you have not set the machine easy install you will get a break in the install process to add details and keycode.Other virtual machine may need you to point to your virtual drive but it is all the same as if you were installing from scratch






As you see the install looks that same as normal. Once complete the machine will reboot and start. As windows opens it triggers install of VMware tools allow these to install as they are helpful.







You can adjust the desktop to any size you wish even upto full screen resolution of the host machine. You can expand to full screen by pressing CTRL ALT and Enter and reduce the same way.
You should now have a full functioning operating system which will act exactly the same as it would if it was on its own hardware. You can use it to install and run apps that do not work under your main OS or test suspect files safely without exposing your data.
Remember you do not have to install XP it might be Windows 98 Windows 95 or even DOS it also runs happliy with none Windows operating systems such as Linux

As a little add on. I installed ZooTycoon 2 in VM which would not play on Vista X64 and it was flawless.Do not expect it to run like a top spec machine but it is a simple enough option to save having to format and install. So all or at least most of your old games should work thanks to the new better 3d acceleration support


This is my article on this it has been posted on a different forum but it is all my work

[SnoopZ]

Nice post Zing.

[Russ]

I think this warrants 'sticky' status

Cheers matey

[Aragorn]

Looks the works Zing.
One minor thing you might want to add is a reference to the free VMWare Server - although personally I use VBox where ever possible.

Originally Posted by Aragorn

Looks the works Zing.
One minor thing you might want to add is a reference to the free VMWare Server - although personally I use VBox where ever possible.

you just added it lol

[Sirius]

Excellent post Zing

[admars]

that looks like the beginnings of a useful starter's guide, good work fella.

[icestar2]

Great post Zing

[DaiNasty]

Cheers Zing. You've clearly put a lot of work into that. Quality post indeed.

[funkyCable]

Cheers Zing, any chance of going a bit more into detail on the network side of things?

I personally use virtualbox it's a lot simplier and you can create dynamic drive space so that it does not eat up all you hdd space at once.

[Kymmy]

Originally Posted by Russ B

I think this warrants 'sticky' status

What about a copy of the first post in the articles section??

[funkyCable]

I second that...Kymmy

Originally Posted by funkyCable

Cheers Zing, any chance of going a bit more into detail on the network side of things?

I personally use virtualbox it's a lot simplier and you can create dynamic drive space so that it does not eat up all you hdd space at once.

you can do that with VMware also

As for the netwroking side of things you are going into depth in your own thread? Maybe if you try VMware as imo it far surpasses its rivals

[funkyCable]

I'm giving it a try. At first I thought it would be a pain opening the server home page to start and then open the console but once I found the "create shortcut" link it was well worth it.

How do you change the hdd to be dynamic? I used the free converter and vmware server 2.0. I would like to change my converted hdd to dynamic.

Is there a way to change the size of the hdd that the guest OS sees eg from a 60gig to 200gig ?