Virtualisation disabled in Home Premium?

[swarfega]

I remember when I bought Vista Home Premium, using virtualisation was disabled. Will that be the same with Windows 7 Home Premium?

I like messing about with virtualisation so will need to buy the right version to be able to do that.

 

[DarkXeno]

I believe you will need Pro or higher to do Virtualization
http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/Windows-Windows-7/category/102
If you scroll down you can see the difference in the packages

 

[swarfega]

Ok, thanks.

 

[jimbo45]

I believe you will need Pro or higher to do Virtualization
Windows 7 - Buy and download from Microsoft Store
If you scroll down you can see the difference in the packages

???????

This looks like 100% B/S

If you run Virtual Box or VMWARE workstation you can fire up ANY supported Virtual machine on it -- whatever version of Windows you are running (including Windows 3.1 if you must) or any OS that supports the Virtual Hardware incorporated into the VM application program.

Most people tend to forget that running VM software is just like running ANY application on your machine -- if the OS will install the vm software then starting a Virtual Machine is not normally a problem.

There are a few exceptions -- for instance to run a 64 bit Guest OS as a VM you'll probably need the VM feature enabled in the Bios -- incidentally even on a 32 bit OS you can actually run a 64 bit guest so long as the Bios vm feature is enabled.

A virtual machine doesn't have ANY idea that it is actually running on anything than "Real Hardware" -- but the Real Hardware that it sees is only the "Virtual Hardware" that the vm software provides.

Normally the restrictions are on actual hardware calls so you won't get DVD playing or video media streaming but other than that you can run a VM with whatever hardware you like provided the guest OS supports it and it uses standard BIOS calls rather than actual hardware accesses..

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Lee]

I have to agree with "jimbo45". At present I am running VMWare's Workstation in Vista Home Premium 64 running the following O/S's: Windows 2000 (sp4), Windows XP sp3, Windows 98 SE, and Windows 95. At present am looking to load up Dos 6.22 then Windows 3.11. So go ahead and enjoy. An oh, by the way, Virtual Box 3.0 has just been release by Sun Microsystems, have downloaded it but not used it as of yet, hopefully somtime today.

 

[DarkXeno]

Yes Jimbo and Lee are correct you can run a 3rd Party software app to do VMs in even if your processor does not have the hardware requirements.
But if you don't want to mess with any other app and have the correct hardware and just have what MS is supplying then Pro or higher would be what you are looking for.