Microsoft Virtual PC & Windows 7

Hello everybody

I need to install 32 bit windows 2003 R2 Standard edition on my laptop. However i have heard that Virtual PC software requires a Virtualization Technology to be enabled in the Processor. Currently i am using windows 7 x64 ultimate on my laptop. My processor is Intel C2Duo T6500. Will it be possible to install windows server 2003 without erasing my root partition. Is there any other way i can install windows server 2003 on my current configuration without making any changes to windows 7??

I don't believe that processor supports VT, so you won't be able to run XP Mode. However, you can still download the regular Virtual PC 2007 app, and run Server 2003 R2 in that.

Nope, a quick search to Intel.com shows that your processor doesn't support VT, so XP Mode is out, but regular Virtual PC 2007 is in.

Or you could use Sun virtualBox or VMWare Server 2.0 both of which are free and don't require virtualization support on your processor.

I found SunvBox to be the easiest and friendliest. Even made a little tutorial about it and MS Virtual PC: Tutorial: How to install Windows7 in a Virtual Partition « How-To Geek Forums

I've used VirtualBox and Virtual PC extensively, and my conclusions are this. If you are only going to virtualize windows, Virtual PC is easier, especially for the networking configuration. If you plan to virtualize Linux, or other non-Microsoft OSes, VirtualBox is king.

I had 2 problems with Virtual PC.

1. The specs say that it requires Vista Ultimate, but I only have Home Premium. It did work "somewhat", but I always had the feeling that something was missing.
2. I was unable to install Win7 from the .iso. Only the CD worked and that took a long time (5 hours on a quad core).

vBox does everything I want for my testing environment.

VirtualBox is nice, once you get the networking to plaay nice. On some of my Vista boxes, VirtualBox's networking played havoc on my existing networking, and I couldn't connect at all. Only uninstalling VirtualBox fixed the issues. In past versions, I had it working fine, just like VirtualPC, where it would grab an IP from my router. I use this so I can maintain an XP domain system like my users. If you aren't having any networking issues with VirtualBox, it runs and acts just about identical to Virtual PC 2007.

does this virtual pc 2007 supports windows 7 as the host os.. i read that it supports vista & xp only

In their update of June 2009, Win7 is not mentioned. Only XP and Vista. But it may work anyhow. Matter of trying.

hackeravneet said:

does this virtual pc 2007 supports windows 7 as the host os.. i read that it supports vista & xp only

Yep, it works fine. I am running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 as the host OS, and Windows 7 Basic/Starter x86 as a guest OS.