Win Virtual Machine

Hi Admin,

just have a quick question.

I just installed win Virtual machine and Xp mode.

I have a 64 bits win7 so during installation i slelect 64 bits win 7 pro..blah blah blah...done installed and updated.

Good!

XP mode running fine.

The question is, is it a 32 bit XP or a 64 bit XP?

Would i be able to install 32 bit program under XP mode? (eg. Auto CAD 2009)

Thanks guys..This help immensely. Now i can hustle my company to give me a copy of AutoCAD...!!!

Hope u guys a great day!

Kari said:

Hello and welcome to the Seven Forums.

I'm not an admin here, just one of the masses, but let me answer your question although you asked for an admin.

Virtual PC runs both on an x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit) systems, but all virtual machines, including XP Mode, are 32-bit. You can not run a 64-bit virtual machine on Virtual PC.

This means simply that all installed applications and software must be 32-bit. A 64-bit application won't work on XP Mode, or on any other Virtual PC machine.

Kari

Hi Kari

Of course you are correct in Virtual PC -- However you CAN run 64 Bit Guest OS'es on 32 Bit machines (provided the VT feature is enabled) if you are running VMWARE products -- I think you can do the same with VBOX also.

The disadvantage here is that if your host OS is say Windows XP then you won't be able to run many Guest OS'es as the Host will only ever see a max of 4 GB RAM.

It works quite well however using Windows 2003 Server as the HOST OS - (Enterprise version) since even though this is a 32 bit OS it allows the use of > 4 GB RAM).

I've tested a number of W7 X-64 configurations on w W2K3 Server HOST before deploying them to REAL machines.

I tend to think W2K3 server was a really great OS and will be reluctant when I really have to give it up for W2008 Server -- still got some hardware that NEEDS XP / W2K3 Server and won't run on W7 or W2008 server.

If people are still running XP (32 bit) on a 64 bit CPU there's no reason why they can't try out a 64 bit OS such as W7 X-64 before upgrading.

W7 X-64 runs quite nicely in a 2GB Virtual machine (with Office 2010 64 bit and Photoshop CS5 too).

Cheers
jimbo