Microsoft Virtual PC from within Vista...

[Crunch]

I was going to get rid of XP, but then Virtual PC sounds interesting. I've got it installed on Vista without any errors after clearing 15GB of space, but after trying several times, I can't figure this thing out. The virtual hard drive messes up, and I see no way of booting into XP with it. Is it because I have a dual-boot configured already? Does it not work with EXISTING XP installations?

Although I no longer use it at all, and after I stripped it of all applications, turned off the paging file and hibernation, I've come to find that it doesn't really take up much more than a few gigs, which is fine with me. It would also be great if I were able to run some legacy apps, and since I like to experiment, I suppose it's good to have a working second OS as something to fall back on in the (hopefully unlikely) case I render my Vista OS unusable. Plus, I would finally be able to make use out of more of my installed RAM. And let's not forget the coolness factor!

Thanks for any replies.

[ajwreinhardt]

There is a very fundamental issue here...you cannot boot an already installed copy of Windows XP in a virtual machine in Virtual PC. You would need to install XP within the VM...I'm not sure what you've done thus far, but what you would do is create the VM with a virtual hard disk of whatever your size (sounds like it would be a few GB) and then you would insert your XP CD, start the virtual machine, and install XP like you would outside a VM. This would not be able to be used except within a Virtual PC environment, so this solution would not allow you to overcome a situation where Vista breaks, but it would obviously be more convenient than rebooting to use XP.

Performance can be worse, esp. in anything beyond simple word processing or web browsing. And games, forget it. But, if you just have a few apps, then it may be the better solution. Hope this info helps.

[Brad]

Just to share on Jake's excellent response.

I have prepared a 16 bit Windows VM to run a legacy app in XP. I copied the file I created and used this VM on more than one XP installation. I used a very large VM of 16gb which now I understand to be about 4 or 5 X what I needed. With the capacity of today's hard drives I never considered making the VM smaller.

I have been using this VM for several years without any trouble.

I am using MS Virtual PC.

Brad