Microsoft Virtual PC

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Microsoft Virtual PC
Screenshot of Virtual PC 2007 for Windows with emulated Windows 2000.
Screenshot of Virtual PC 2007 for Windows with virtualized Windows 2000
Developed by Microsoft Corporation
Latest release 2007 SP1 (Windows), 7.0.3 (Mac) / May 15, 2008 (Windows), August 14, 2007 (Mac)
OS Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X (deprecated), Mac OS (deprecated)
Genre Emulator, Virtual machine
License Proprietary, but free to download and use
Website for Windows
for Mac
Virtual PC redirects here, for the generic term see Virtual Machine

Microsoft Virtual PC is a virtualization suite for Microsoft Windows operating systems, and an emulation suite for Mac OS X on PowerPC-based systems. The software was originally written by Connectix, and was subsequently acquired by Microsoft. In July 2006 Microsoft released the Windows-hosted version as a free product. In August 2006 Microsoft announced the Macintosh-hosted version would not be ported to Intel-based Macintoshes, effectively discontinuing the product as PowerPC-based Macintoshes are no longer manufactured.

Virtual PC virtualizes a standard PC and its associated hardware. Supported Windows operating systems can run inside Virtual PC, however other operating systems like Linux may run, but are not officially supported.

Contents

[edit] Emulated environment

Virtual PC emulates the following.

Not all programs are guaranteed to work because they can use undocumented features of hardware, exotic timings, or unsupported opcodes, although overall compatibility can be considered satisfactory.

It also uses some guest calls traps (especially when using the guest extensions) to accelerate emulation or offer additional features, such as integration with the host environment.

Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) is the file format used by Virtual PC and Virtual Server, for which Microsoft has made available all documentation under the Open Specification Promise.

[edit] Virtual Machine Additions

To facilitate exchange and sharing of files, folders and data between the host operating system and the guest operating system, Virtual PC supports installing Virtual Machine Additions. These are installed in the guest operating system and provide the following functionality across the host and guest operating systems:

  • Better performance of the guest OS
  • Integrated use of the mouse
  • Optimized video drivers
  • Time synchronization with the host
  • Clipboard sharing
  • Drag-and-drop capabilities

[edit] Supported Host and Guest Operating Systems

Host Operating Systems

Virtual PC 2007 supports the following as a host operating system (although some, such as Vista Home Premium, will display a warning and work regardless):

Windows Vista ( 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Ultimate, Enterprise, Business editions and European Business N only, not Vista Starter, Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium or European Vista Home N editions)
Windows XP ( XP Pro 32 bit and XP x64 64 bit only, not Home or Media Center editions )
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2008

Virtual PC 2004 was the last version to support Windows 2000 as the host OS.

Guest Operating Systems

Virtual PC 2007 can use the following as a guest operating system:

Support for Windows 95, the Windows 98 original release, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation and MS-DOS 6.22 as guest operating systems has been discontinued in VirtualPC 2007. [1]

Guest operating systems which are officially unsupported may be installable, however, they may or may not work properly and Virtual Machine Additions are not available.

Linux guests are officially unsupported in Virtual PC 2004 and 2007 although Virtual Machine Additions support for Linux was available in Connectix's version of Virtual PC before being acquired by Microsoft. Microsoft supports VM Additions for Linux only in their Virtual Server product. Both the OS/2 and Linux VM additions were developed by German company innotek GmbH for Connectix/Microsoft [2].

[edit] Emulating Linux-based environments

Although installing a Linux-based environment is possible, it is not seamless. For some supported Linux distributions, the guest operating system will need to be installed in text mode, as Microsoft Virtual PC only emulates graphics at 16-bit or 32-bit color depth, not 24-bit. In order to run an X Window user interface, the guest operating system will need to have xorg.conf edited to 16-bit in order to comply with this limitation.[3]

Some websites specialize in listing operating systems that work over Virtual PC, including Linux distributions, so the user can avoid issues when testing those unsupported OSes over Virtual PC.[4]

[edit] Version history

Virtual PC 6.1 for Macintosh
Virtual PC 6.1 for Macintosh

The first version of Virtual PC was originally developed by Connectix for the Macintosh and was released in June 1997. Four years later in June 2001, the first version of Virtual PC for Windows, version 4.0, was released. Connectix sold versions of Virtual PC bundled with a variety of operating systems, including many versions of Windows, OS/2, and Red Hat Linux. As it became clear that virtualization was important to the enterprise, Microsoft became interested in the sector and chose to acquire Virtual PC and an (at the time) unreleased product called "Virtual Server" from Connectix in February 2003.

Version 5.0 was ported by innotek GmbH (makers of VirtualBox and now part of Sun Microsystems) to run with OS/2 as host [5]. For this version, innotek also developed guest extensions for OS/2 guest, that can be used with Windows, OS/2 or Mac OS X hosts using Virtual PC versions 5, 6 or 7. A new version of the guest extensions was included with Virtual PC 2004.

On July 12, 2006, Microsoft released Virtual PC 2004 for Windows as a free product but the Mac version was not made free. The Windows version may be downloaded from here. The equivalent version for Mac, version 7, was the final version of Virtual PC to be released for Mac.

On October 11, 2006, Microsoft made available the first public beta release of Virtual PC 2007 to testers and on February 19, 2007, Microsoft released the final version. As expected, Virtual PC 2007 is only available for the Windows platform. The main improvements over Virtual PC 2004 are support for hardware virtualization, viewing virtual machines on multiple monitors and support for Windows Vista as both host and guest (although Windows Vista guests currently cannot make use of Aero Glass due to the limitations of the emulated video hardware unless the guest Vista OS utilizes a Remote Desktop Connection to the host Vista OS). On May 15, 2008, Microsoft released Virtual PC 2007 Service Pack 1 [6].

Virtual Machine Additions for Linux are available on the Microsoft Download Center, however, they are officially supported only in Virtual Server [7] and also were developed by innotek [8].

[edit] Intel-based Mac support

Microsoft announced on August 7, 2006 that Virtual PC for Mac would not be ported to the Intel Mac platform. Microsoft stated “alternative solutions offered by Apple such as Boot Camp and by other vendors, combined with a fully packaged retail copy of Windows, will satisfy this need.”[9]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Virtual PC 2007 Release Notes
  2. ^ VirtualPC Version History
  3. ^ Geek For Life (2006). Installing Fedora Core on Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. Geek For Life. Retrieved on 2007-05-01.
  4. ^ What Works and What Doesn't in Microsoft Virtual PC 2004
  5. ^ Innotek/Connectix Virtual PC
  6. ^ Microsoft releases Virtual PC 2007 SP1
  7. ^ VM Additions for Linux
  8. ^ VirtualPC Version History
  9. ^ Cohen, Peter (2006-08-07). WWDC: Microsoft kills Virtual PC for Mac. MacWorld. Retrieved on 2007-10-08.

Use your Windows XP license from Virtual PC v.7 [1]

[edit] External links