Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

[Thorin]

I've just purchased a new Pc with Microsoft Vista pre-installed, and was considering installing Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on it to run Windows 98 and use some of my older games.

I had seen somewhere that Virtual PC has issues with USB compatability, and as my keyboard and mouse are wireless but conected to a controller that is plugged into a USB port, I was wondering if I would have problems using them under Virtual PC.

Has anyone had any experience/problems with Virtual PC that they could share ?

 

[mrhartley]

Hello,

I thought it was free which is the perfect way to try these things out for yourself.

Good luck
~Mark

 

[SydneyGeek]

I use VPC 2007 to run XP on my Vista machine but haven't tried to run USB drives in the virtual machine yet. However, from the VPC Help files---

You can access removable drives on the host operating system, such as USB–connected hard drives and Zip drives, by using shared folders. For more information about setting up shared folders for use between a host operating system and a virtual machine, see Managing shared folders for virtual machines.

Which says...
Shared folders allow a virtual machine to access a folder or volume on the host computer as if it were a network share. A shared folder can be persisistent—which means that it is shared again each time the virtual machine operating system boots—or temporary, which means that it is only available until the virtual machine operating system is shut down. You cannot share folders directly between virtual machines, but multiple guest machines can share a folder on the host operating system.
Before users can use shared folders, you must configure the Shared Folders setting on the virtual machine. The Shared Folders setting is available only if the virtual machine is running and Virtual Machine Additions is installed. You can share folders either by using the Shared Folders setting, which is accessible from the Settings menu of the virtual machine or by right-clicking the folder icon on the status bar of the virtual machine, or by dragging a folder or volume to the folder icon.

So, it can be done indirectly. From what I read, VMWare is far more flexible. The Player is free: the Workstation version is required for you to be able to create your virtual machines but you can download a 3-week free trial. Once it expires, use the player to run the VM.

Denis

 

[Jon Peltier]

I have VPC 2007 on two XP machines. Each have USB keyboards and mice, as well as USB external drives. On both, I have no issues using the USB HIDs ("Human Interaction Devices"!!) from a VM, but I cannot access the USB drives from the VMs on either. This indicates that there must be different "level" of USB devices. It also may indicate that I'm not very familiar with the VPC options.