Windows 7: Fix video problems in Win7 32bit virtual machine

I'm trying to install the correct 32 bit video drivers in the virtual Windows 7 32bit machine that runs on my Windows 7 64bit computer.

The program that I want to run gives me an error that says "your graphics card does not cover the required scope of functions or the color depth is not set to 32 bits".



How do I resolve this issue?

Hi Jhag47, welcome to the Seven Forums.

Virtualization applications like Microsoft Virtual PC, Oracle VirtualBox and VMWare Player use their own virtual, emulated hardware and drivers, not the hardware installed on your host PC. This emulated hardware and drivers are included and automatically installed when you install an OS on a virtual machine.

Not knowing which virtualization application you use to run your Windows 7 virtual machine, here's an example: Microsoft Virtual PC uses an emulated S3 Trio GPU on its virtual machines. Let's say you have an AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 GHz Edition GPU card on your PC, and you install Windows 7 on a Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machine. This virtual machine (guest) does not even find the ATI GPU of your PC (host), instead it installs said S3 Trio emulated GPU and drivers.

In other words: your virtual machines do not use the hardware and drivers of your host. Instead they use their own emulated hardware. You can't use, can't install drivers of your host motherboard, sound card and GPU to virtual machines because the virtual machine can't use the hardware of your host PC.

So, to put it short, here's your question:
And here the answer: It can't be resolved, for your windows 7 virtual machine can't use the GPU of your host PC. You can't replace the virtual hardware drivers on a virtual machine.

Kari

Is this true of a graphics card that has been added to the computer like my PNY Quadro 600?

You said "Not knowing which virtualization application you use to run your Windows 7 virtual machine". I'm using Microsoft Virtual PC that is part of my Windows 7 Pro 64bit system. Are there any other virtualization programs that would allow me to install my video card and it's drivers within it?

There is no way to change the Virtual PC emulated S3 Trio GPU. It can never use your host PC's GPU, whatever card you have.

Virtual PC, like other normal end user virtualization platforms can use external USB devices, so theoretically it could be possible to use an external USB GPU. However, because of other limitations of a virtual machine (all hardware is emulated) I do not think that would work very well.

If you want to use your host's native hardware on a virtual machine you need to spend a lot of money for an industrial standard virtualization platform like for instance VMware ESXI Server.

Kari