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Thread ID: 80011	2007-06-08 12:31:00	XP and Vista Virtual Machine	JMoore (9352)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
557293	2007-06-08 12:31:00	Hi there, I have XP Home and Vista set up to dual boot on this machine however I was looking at the possibility of running XP inside Vista using Virtual PC or Parallels. I installed Virtual PC and tried to add XP as a Virtual Machine but it asked me to create a virtual hard drive on which I had to install XP. XP is already installed on another hard drive and I was wondering if it was possible to point it to this location rather than installing it again? If anyone has any knowledge about this or knows how I can achieve this in another program it would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks...	JMoore (9352)
557294	2007-06-08 20:10:00	If you want to run XP on the HDD in dual boot and VM there will be many problems with drivers etc... but i would suggest reinstalling it... you can use the HDD as the virtual HDD though...	The_End_Of_Reality (334)
557295	2007-06-08 21:41:00	Hi there, I have XP Home and Vista set up to dual boot on this machine however I was looking at the possibility of running XP inside Vista using Virtual PC or Parallels. I installed Virtual PC and tried to add XP as a Virtual Machine but it asked me to create a virtual hard drive on which I had to install XP. XP is already installed on another hard drive and I was wondering if it was possible to point it to this location rather than installing it again? If anyone has any knowledge about this or knows how I can achieve this in another program it would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks... I use Virtual PC 2007 to run XP inside Vista, and it works a treat. With Virtual-Machine Addons installed, I can just mouse back and forth between the two OSes without having to constantly "capture" and "uncapture" my mouse, can share clipboard, and just drag/drop files. To answer your question though, as far as I know you cannot get Virtual PC to point to a real hard drive. I think that one of the only virtualisation apps out there which do it is VMWare Workstation, which is quite expensive.	somebody (208)
557296	2007-06-08 21:43:00	Actually coming to think of it, I think that your XP install will jump up and down about having the hardware constantly changed, as the "Virtual Machine" hardware isn't the same as your physical hardware. I assume the reason you want to do this is for file sharing purposes? My solution around this is to simply map a network drive on the Vista host, so that I can modify the same files within either XP or Vista.	somebody (208)
557297	2007-06-08 22:02:00	Oh, I though MS Virtual PC could use a real HDD... I know VMware can... Yeah, it will not be good for the install of XP to jump around with the drivers like that...	The_End_Of_Reality (334)
557298	2007-06-08 22:10:00	Oh, I though MS Virtual PC could use a real HDD... I know VMware can... Yeah, it will not be good for the install of XP to jump around with the drivers like that... " No support for using a virtual hard disk linked to a physical hard disk You can create a virtual hard disk that is linked to a physical hard disk by using Virtual PC. However, it is no longer possible to use a virtual hard disk that is linked to a physical hard disk in a virtual machine. A virtual hard disk linked to a physical hard disk allows the guest operating system to directly modify the contents of a linked physical hard disk. This means that the guest operating system can overwrite the contents of the physical hard disk and potentially corrupt the host operating system and other programs and data of the physical hard disk." From: download.microsoft.com	somebody (208)
557299	2007-06-08 22:33:00	Ah OK, I had it mixed up then... goes to show how often I use virtual machines :p	The_End_Of_Reality (334)
557300	2007-06-09 04:38:00	Cheers for all the replies, so as I see it the short answer is no! but maybe on VMWare? somebody: XP and Vista are both installed on the same machine so I can already see all the harddrives and files, I just wanted it for convenience of opening programs etc that won't work in Vista. What is the issue with drivers?	JMoore (9352)
557301	2007-06-09 04:44:00	The issue is that if you had Virtual PC using your existing WinXP installation, it will cause problems because the hardware simulated by VPC is different to what you have. What this means is that every time you change from booting WinXP on your "real" PC to your "virtual" PC, and vice versa, it'll jump up and down about you changing hardware on the same copy of XP. I think your best bet is to just install a fresh copy of WinXP on VPC2007. Make sure you also install the "Virtual Machine Addons" as it makes things so much easier to use. I use my XP virtual machine for the purpose of running duplicate versions of the same program - i.e. I run the latest version of this program on my Vista install, but occasionally need to use an older version for older files and tasks, which is where the XP VM comes in handy.	somebody (208)
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