Summary of Virtual Machine use in win7: Virtual PC, VMWare and virtualbox

I want to use virtual machines for many years. After I change to win7, I need to use virtual machines for various reasons. Here I will briefly introduce and compare them.

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Virtual PC:

If you want to create a Windows virtual machine, virtual PC is the best choice in the previous system. When using Vista, you installed msdos6.2, 7.1, windows3.1, 3.2, 98, me, XP, 2008, Vista, and win7 are almost all Windows operating systems. As a Ms product, it is very convenient to use on its own platform, with low memory usage and Fast startup.

In terms of network, you do not need to bridge or use NAT to share the virtual network card. You can use it as a common computer in the same subnet without any network settings. For example, if your gateway is 192.168.0.1, your IP address is 192.168.0.135, And the IP address of your VM may be 192.168.0.136.

Disks that cannot be installed on other virtual machines can be installed.

I do not know why the previous Virtual PC cannot be installed in Windows 7, but only one dedicated version can be installed. Another name is Windows XP mode, which means that only XP virtual machines can be used. If this is installed in win7, you can directly use the XP Virtual Machine instead of the installation disk. This makes it easier for users who are reluctant to leave XP, leading to more people flowing to other virtual machine products.

XP mode in win7 does not support dragging files directly to the virtual machine. However, all drive letters on the primary disk are automatically mapped to the network hard disk to facilitate file sharing. By default, the disk space of the primary disk is approximately 130 GB, Which is dynamically scalable. The actual capacity is only several hundred MB at the beginning.

 

I haven't found how to create a virtual machine for a long time. I used to click "Windows Virtual PC" in the Start Menu ":

 

Then there is a "create virtual machine" in the "burn" and "create folder" in the display control bar under the toolbar (if any) in the open Resource Manager ", set the locations of the primary and differential disks.

Virtual PC can install other operating systems or even Linux. XP mode is only a special application of virtual PC.

 

VMware:

This process takes the longest time. In at least five years, N windows, Linux, UNIX, and MAC systems have been installed. Originally, there was only one version, and later there was a branch, currently, I have been using workstation products. At present, it is recognized that the best use of a green version of 6.0.5 is only dozens of MB, because I am willing to make it take up space, so I have been using the complete version, this month, we have a new version, 7.0.0 build-203739, which is about 500 mb. After installation, we can directly use the VM files generated in the previous version. The compatibility is good, and VMware Tools can also be used normally, however, you can also use the latest one. After installation, you can drag files directly to the virtual machine.

This software is commonly used because of its Snapshot System. It allows you to create system snapshots and restore them at any time of startup. It is mainly used to debug software and tools that easily generate blue screens and is very practical. Now we have added the record recording function in version 7.

A bad thing is that it virtualizes two NICs during installation. You can also Virtualize more NICs in the settings. Generally, you can use the bridge method to enable the VM to access the Internet, you have never used Nat. I do not like it because the host cannot access the Internet after the sp2 patch is applied when I use vista sp1. It took a while to find out that the system used a virtual network card as the primary network card, of course, it will always show that the network is not connected to the gateway but not to the network. Like virtualbox, it modifies the NIC settings of the computer.

 

 

Hard Disk, can be set to dynamic expansion or fixed size, I usually set to a fixed size of 8 GB, if it is an XP system, it is enough to install a vs2008, fixed size is said to be faster, I use a single logical hard disk to buffer Virtual Machine disks, leaving around 100 GB.

It seems that VMWare has started to support d3d since 6.0.5, so it is no problem to play 3D games in virtual machines. As long as the memory is large enough and the video card is good enough, you can implement multiple plug-ins for games. For me, it is convenient to debug xna3d games in other operating systems. You Need To Know That xNa has high performance requirements on the graphics card and can be used in virtual graphics cards.

If the file size is too large, you can enable the file sharing Function and drag a small file to the screen:

Another feature of VMware is to be used as a plug-in of Visual Studio. If Viusal studio 2008 has been installed before, the following information is displayed:

Function menu in Viusal studio 2008:

Conclusion: very good and powerful

Virtualbox:

This is a recent trial. Sun's product is a lightweight Virtual Machine Platform. The latest version is 3.0.10, and the complete installation package is dozens of MB, with relatively simple functions, the snapshot function is called backup and quick recovery. It is not convenient to jump between different snapshots. You can set whether to enable 3D acceleration, but cannot run the xNa game I debugged.

Although the virtual Windows has its own plug-in installed, it cannot implement the file drag function.

File Sharing is called "Data Space" here. When the instance is shut down, select a local directory in the settings column to add it to the fixed allocation column:

Right-click my computer in the VM and select ing network drive. In the folder view, select virtualbox shared foders from the entire network and select the shared folder, after confirming, You can map it to a drive letter on my computer.

Other highlights have not yet been found. We look forward to your suggestions.

Virtual Machine for win7	Billing information	Latest Version	Installation Package Size	Features
Virtual pc xp Mode	Free	-	548 m (including one XP system)	Closely integrated with Windows
VMware Workstation	Billing	7.0	497 m	A large number of peripheral products are available, and many features are unavailable.
Virtualbox	Free	3.0.10	69 m	Lightweight, generally enough applications

 

I hope this article will help you.