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One for the geeks and those wanting old Operating Systems

furie

furie

SBOPD
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This is a really geeky topic :lol:

For those who don't know, Microsoft have something called "Virtual PC".

It's a free download which allows you to create a, erm, Virtual PC :)

Essentially, it uses part of your current PC hard disk and RAM and then lets you install a complete operating system onto it.

Why is this good?

Well, if you have a game which will only run on XP or Windows 98, you can (if you have the legitimate versions) install them into the Virtual PC and run the games from those installs.

The best thing is that it runs in a Window, so you don't actually need to reboot your PC.

I've dug some old games out that just point blank wont run on XP (Doom anyone?) and it's also useful if you want to run tests on packages without destroying your normal PC setup (Trial of IE 8? Put it into a separate XP install).

What are you waiting for? Download it now for free and play to your heart's content :)

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downlo ... c0b40a73b6

If you need a hand, I'll help out all I can, but DON'T ask me for OS install disks or links to them!
 
I needed to use this for Cisco.

So we could... y'know.

Kill windows without breaking the entire computer.

We also used it to play about in Ubuntu.
 
We've been using Virtual PC for a while at work for our IE6 testing.

Annoying how the images that Microsoft supply expire after three months or something.
 
I use it on the netbook to run linux and that for uni...

For playing the older games, i tend to use something like DOSbox. Essentially it emulates DOS! YAY!

For playing the old scumm based games I use ScummVM, which is by far the best emulator i've ever used. There are so many ports for mobile phones, PSP, DS etc etc So i can sit playing Monkey Island on my N85, pretty funky
 
Excellent cheers Phil.

My mum wants to install some old point and click games on her Windows Vista. I shall have a crack at this a little later in the week and let you know how I get on!!!
 
I have VMWare here at work, I use it for test bed systems. It's much better than the Microsoft one as it allows you to create a virtual machine from another machine on the network (very sweet).

WINE seems more of an emulator. Not quite, but more so than MS Virtual Machine and VMWare.

MS Virtual Machine actually opens a DOS boot window when you set up a new virtual machine. From there, you can put on any operating system you like, just as if you had a blank hard disk. Want Linux? On it goes! Dos 6.22 and Windows 3.1? No worries (you just need a virtual set of Dos floppy disk images :) ).

I wonder if you had a Mac running XP if you could then us a MS Virtual Machine to run a Mac OS?
 
Emulators are pants, they slow the system down far to much. They never preform 100% either as they can not use drivers from another operating system. For example Linux could not use my ipod, installed an emulator for Windows installed itunes and it could still not see my ipod. Booted to Windows it could see my ipod. They are completly software driven and not worth the money, you are best off with a different install.

VMWARE is a great tool we use it at work, but I do wish the Windows team would stop asking me Linux questions :) But again the team have found problems with the hardware when it comes to fibre attachment and speed. Yes you save money 1 box can run 10 servers but you try and back them up. The backup time has increased from 6 hours to 24 as they now have to go over the network and not fibre.

I am sure Furie and Martyn will know what I am going on about.
 
I discussed this with some IT chappies I had a meeting with last week. Most agreed. It's good for a test environment and for emergency builds, but useless for a live environment - virtualisation just doesn't do the job properly.

However, MS Virtual Machine is fantastic for playing old games!!! :lol:
 
They use it here for production servers to save money on hardware, but it just affects other things as I said.

It does not seem to be that stable all the time either. They wanted to use it for Unix and I told them where to go lol.
 
well, i had to get involved with this geeky convo...

We use VMware everywhere her at work, production, test the lot..

We have a direct attached SAN which replicates to another sites SAN and consequently they look after each other, along with redundant VMware VM's ready to take over in event of failure. So in otherwords, VMware is only viable in a huge expensive, efficient network with appropriate hardware and communications..

So far its been ultra reliable.. It was all implemented by IBM though..

MS Virtual Machine is IMO rubbish in comparision to VMware. But for playing old games its perfectly adequate!



RCT2 Works fine on a VM! Yay!
 
Yeah, the guys I talked to were being pushed into running it in their environments by the big bosses, but implemented in house. All were small IT depts with between 1 (me) and 8 full time staff, all of us looking after multiple sites, with up to 12 sites and a few hundred users (I have four sites and 50 users).

VM ware just doesn't work like that, as there isn't enough time and money within the departments for it to work - you have to do it properly. I assume Marc is in the same situatino with his inhouse IT team trying to push the envelope themselves?

VMWare is the mutt's nuts! I love it, but it's not as a free for home use - which was the point of this topic :)
 
Furie same situation as you.

The guys bought it and installed it, then asked me the Linux stuff. They then set up what they needed to and bang the servers a live 2 weeks later running exchange and the file server.

Then I notice that their backups are taking ages etc.

As I keep saying, if your going to use a SAN, Tape Silo, VTL etc be prepared to spend the money and get it done properly.

At least I have learnt alot and thats a good thing.
 
^ Totally agree with you on the do it properly. I've learned loads about VMware in the 6-9 months. This project cost the company around £3-5Million pounds to implement.

It covers 16 different application servers, mainly UNIX, and Windows OS's but varied types of apps, Oracle, SQL, Exchange 2007, SAP and a File server as well.. There are also some legacy ones in there as well such as AS400.. The link we have between sites is 1Gbit fibre... That costs a fortune on its own to say the least..

Sorry to get off topic, im a sucker at getting into geek conversations! lol

Another game i play via VM's is SimCopter! I love that game..
 
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