Windows Virtual PC - boot from ISO image?

I'm currently running Win7 Ultimate x64 (RC). I cannot seem to figure out how I can have the virtual PC I've created boot from an ISO image. It was really simple in VPC2007, so I hope I'm just overlooking something.

Slightly OT, but can anyone who did not actually work on this product explain why it seems to be such a horrible step backwards from VPC2007? It seems to be slower, more complicated, and less-capable in many areas.

HeyItsTodd said:

I'm currently running Win7 Ultimate x64 (RC). I cannot seem to figure out how I can have the virtual PC I've created boot from an ISO image. It was really simple in VPC2007, so I hope I'm just overlooking something.

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Open of Windows Virtual Machine. Highlight the VM in question, click on Settings at the top of the screen, scroll down to DVD Drive and make sure that you have ISO checked. I'm not sure how to force it to go into the virtual BIOS to set things like the boot priority and device preferences.

HeyItsTodd said:

Slightly OT, but can anyone who did not actually work on this product explain why it seems to be such a horrible step backwards from VPC2007? It seems to be slower, more complicated, and less-capable in many areas.

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I certainly cannot explain it, but I can confirm that you are not alone in your assessment. It's terrible, the performance is awful. For somebody just seeing virtualization for the first time, it's going to be pretty neat. For anybody that has worked with anything else in the past, it's going to be something that they seek out an alternative for. I've scrapped the use of this completely in favor of Sun's Virtualbox. Virtualbox is faster, doesn't require hardware virtualization and works with non Microsoft based OS's very well...unlike the MS product.

I had the same problem with VPC. That's why I switched to Sun vBox where that works perfectly.

Open of Windows Virtual Machine. Highlight the VM in question, click on Settings at the top of the screen, scroll down to DVD Drive and make sure that you have ISO checked. I'm not sure how to force it to go into the virtual BIOS to set things like the boot priority and device preferences.

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I had found that, but it doesn't boot into the DVD.

I've scrapped the use of this completely in favor of Sun's Virtualbox. Virtualbox is faster, doesn't require hardware virtualization and works with non Microsoft based OS's very well...unlike the MS product.

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I certainly won't be creating any new VM's in this POC, but I have a couple of VM's with a fair amount of configuration time & effort invested, so I'll probably use it until I get the time to create a VM in a useful system.

Sames as you would do with a physical PC: hit DEL when booting the VM, enter the BIOS and change the boot device priority.

And I agree, VirtualBox is better.

I agree. This release of VPC is the biggest piece of cr@p MS has put out (as far as virtualization goes). I've been running VPC/VS since they were in beta.

Going to download vmware now.