I wouldn’t get this performance if there were issues with the virtual hardware. For example, 2.0 takes less than 10 seconds. Even when inside the distribution, there isn’t any noticeable difference between application launch times. Ubuntu and Pardus took about the same time to boot that they do on a similar VMware virtual machine. But when I powered up the virtual machines, I was surprised by the performance of the installed distributions. Now I was almost positive that the issue was with the virtualized hard disks, which would explain the performance from the live CDs, and the exhaustive install times. Pardus took almost three hours to install, compared to the 40 minutes it took via VMware. Thinking the issue could be with my physical DVD drive, the virtualized CD drive, or the installation media, I tried installing the single CD Pardus Linux 2007 from its ISO image. I also tried the Slackware Linux 11 text-based installer and gave up after about five hours and two CDs. But I can’t do anything about it, since the only configurable hard disk parameter is its size. The issue could be with VPC trying to virtualize an IDE disk on my physical SATA drive. The same procedure, on a virtual machine with the same specs, created with VMware Workstation, takes about half an hour. On VPC 2007, the file copying process took about 2 hours. Since Ubuntu is a single CD install, it doesn’t usually take very long to install. ![]() So, I followed the instructions on the Wiki and got to the Ubuntu 6.10 live CD desktop and started installation. It’s rather strange that VPC 2007 still has this issue, but at least the problem is understood. Installing Ubuntu in Virtual PC 2007 – click to viewīasically, I had to modify my X server’s configuration file to change the default display depth to 16 bits instead of the default of 24. A quick Google search led me to the Ubuntu Wiki which has a page on configuring Ubuntu for the previous release of VPC, Virtual PC 2004. VPC 2007 had trouble displaying the Ubuntu desktop. First up was Ubuntu 6.10, which is installable via its live CD environment. Satisfied with the performance of the live CDs, I decided to test some installable distributions. Next in line was the latest FreeBSD-based live CD, FreeSBIE 2.0 - which, like Knoppix, worked like a charm. The guest system plugged into my network through a bridged connection, got its own IP address and networking worked seamlessly. Impressed, I fired up 2.0, which loaded up in a matter of seconds. Boot up and hardware recognition went fine, and I was at the KDE desktop in less than 20 seconds after powering up the machine. The first distribution I tried was Knoppix 5.0. For the test I created a guest with 512MB RAM and a 6GB hard disk with pre-allocated space to reduce over-head. VPC 2007 supports IVT for improving performance. My test computer has the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 processor with the IVT virtualization extension. ![]() The “Use default settings to create a virtual machine” option creates a useless VM with 128 MB RAM and no hard disk. You can choose to go through a detailed procedure to create a virtual machine, or let VPC create one for you. VPC’s interface is pretty simple and straightforward. VPC 2007 only runs on Windows XP Professional and later versions of Windows. The download size of VPC 2004 SP1 is 18.2 MB.The biggest news in this release of Virtual PC 2007 is its support for Windows Vista, both as host as well as guest OS. Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2004 SP1 software requires Windows 2000 Professional SP4, Windows XP Professional or later, and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition or later. The virtual machine allows users to test a new development environment, experiment with applications on other operating system or simply try out a new configuration without changing the underlying OS. Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 (VPC) mainly supports Windows operating system as guest operating system on virtual machines, namely MSDOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, OS/2, Windows NT Server, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server, and Other, which may be Linux. Virtual PC 2004 is a virtual desktop computer BIOS and environment for Windows that allows users to run multiple instances of operating systems on a single computer by creating an entirely software-oriented computer with a disk-based image, running on a version of AMI BIOS that simulates as a physical computer to whatever guest operating system, and shares physical devices such as optical drive and network interface as a virtual machine. Microsoft has released Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1 as a free virtualization software to public for free download.
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