Best VM for me?

[bww]

Getting a new laptop Wed with Win 7 Pro (6 gb mem) moving from a WinXP pro and want to use basic virtualization (new laptop is hardware compatible). I have read lots of threads and looked, as much as I could, at VirtualBox, VMPlayer and VirtualPC xpmode. Which should I use?

1. I will only be running either Win7 or XP as the guest OSs and not doing anything but basic things. XP just to have my old system and Win 7 if I want to try something before loading to my real system.
2. I would like to get my old XP system over to be able to run programs from it by using a VHD save (I have acronis for doing the image backup as VHD).
3. Very imporant is I want something that will be easy and as trouble free as possible as I am new to virtualization.

What is the best choice for me of the three programs?

Thank you

 

[Dinesh]

I'd recommend virtualbox. It's easy to use, IMO.
Besides, many ppl here uses MS XP Mode.

 

[Pusspa]

XP mode on win7 seems ok unless you actually want to use it! i say VirtualBox, its free, it works, and here i am posting from linux in win7!!

 

[bww]

Thank you both for your recommendation.
Would I be able to make a VHD of my current XP pro system (using Disk2VHD) and load it into virtualbox on my Win 7 system and run the programs, etc from the VHD?

 

[pparks1]

I'd recommend VMware Player 3.x. That's the product that I use and have used VMWare products for a number of years. You certainly can convert your existing machine into a VM with the VMWare Converter...which is a free application.

For your needs, any of these products should work well enough with little difficulty.

 

[Pusspa]

Thank you both for your recommendation.
Would I be able to make a VHD of my current XP pro system (using Disk2VHD) and load it into virtualbox on my Win 7 system and run the programs, etc from the VHD?

Migrate_Windows - VirtualBox

 

[sandman]

I am new to the Virtual world and i went with Virtual Player and it auto installed Windows Server 2008 R2 from the iso image of my hard drive and it went pretty fast works great as far as i can tell at this point in my usage of the program. I like it better than dual booting like I did with vista and Windows 7 and XP good luck to all in the virtual world.

 

[Darician]

VirtualBox is okay though I'd recommend VMware Player or VMware Workstation.

 

[Mercurial]

VmPlayer if you want real performance especially with graphics.

 

[bagavan]

try sun virtual box..

 

[DeaconFrost]

1. If you have a license for XP, consider VirtualBox. If not, XP Mode gives you one.
2. You don't need backup software for a VM. Just copy the VM file off to an external drive or server. If you need to restore, just copy the file back to your hard drive.
3. All generally work the same way, so if you are familiar with one, you'll be fine with the others.

You certainly can convert your existing machine into a VM with the VMWare Converter...which is a free application.

Except it doesn't work that reliably. I'm trying to pull in some physical servers to my ESXi box, and two of the three say they are completed without errors, but won't boot on the new ESXi server.

 

[pparks1]

Except it doesn't work that reliably. I'm trying to pull in some physical servers to my ESXi box, and two of the three say they are completed without errors, but won't boot on the new ESXi server.

Well, there are often a few documented reasons for this. For example,if you have teamed nic drives installed on your host, you often have to uninstall them prior to doing the vmware conversion so that the NIC's work right after conversion. I've converted several boxes in the past and have experienced few issues. More were like annoyances once complete rather than something that flat out would not boot.

 

[DeaconFrost]

We've gone through a list of known "no-no"s and haven't found any that pertain to these two servers. One is a simple server with a single SATA drive, single core proc, single NIC, running Server 2003 SP2 and WSS 3.0. It is a great tool, especially when moving these old servers to a blazing fast new virtual one...I just wish we weren't getting these roadblocks.