W7 with VMware (formerly Virtualbox)

[fink]

Nick, I was looking at the VMWare website. I'm not really familiar with the product and I'm unsure of which one I would need to use. Would the free "player" allow me to install W7 on a virtual machine?

Is there anything I should be extra careful of while installing W7? Will it matter where I get the HD space from when I install it... can I instruct it to use a spare partition?

TIA

EDIT- Maybe a dumb question but after I install W7 in the VM will it only ever be accessible after I turn on the VMachine? Or will I be able to access W7 as a standard OS using a bootloader?

I really don't want to install W7 on C drive. I like my weekly backup images to remain at less than 3Gigs in size.

[SuperSparks]

I use VMWare Workstation, but that is $ware. VMWare server is freeware, and should be fine despite the name, as long as you don't try and install it on a 64-bit system (it won't install). If you do want to install on x64, then I'd go for Virtual Box instead.

With any virtual machine, the "disk space" used by the guest OS is in reality just a file on the host PC, and you can save it wherever you like. I do keep my VM files in a separate partition, but that's only for convenience, there is no need to.

Just fire up your chosen virtualisation software, then run the wizard to create a new VM. It's all fairly self-explanatory stuff, you can lave most settings to the defaults. Once that is done, either put the Win7 DVD in the drive, or point the VM to the ISO file, the start the VM - it will "boot" just as if you are installing on a real PC, and Setup will run. Everything is normal, you don't need to do anything differently when installing to a VM.

You can only access a VM from the virtualisation software that is running on the host PC. While running it is sandboxed from the host and as far as it is concerned is the only OS that is running on the hardware, so you can treat it exactly as you would a normal OS that is installed direct to the hardware.

[fink]

Right. So I need to install the OS every time I reboot/run the computer. I'd kinda thought that it would be a permanent install that I'd be able to access quickly only via the virtual machine.

tanks

[fink]

I'm trying Virtualbox. Seems ok so far. W7 is installing.

[SuperSparks]

Right. So I need to install the OS every time I reboot/run the computer. I'd kinda thought that it would be a permanent install that I'd be able to access quickly only via the virtual machine.

tanks

No, you install it once, and it is saved as a file on the Host PC. Then when you want to run it, you fire up the virtualisation app and start the guest PC running from there.

[fink]

Yeah, I figured that out once I got it running. Seems to work fine. It's a double dose of learning though since I haven't used the virtual ware before either.

Let me say that Windows settings and transfer wizard is no wizard. It's a major pain.

I just now have to figure out how to get windows to see other drives in the host computer to make things easier. USB drive too.

[SuperSparks]

What are you using, VMWare Server?

The guest OS will not "see" any other drives or partitions on the host, as far as it is concerned it is the only OS on the machine, and doesn't know of the host's existence. Howver, you can share folders, or even entire partitions. In VMWare Workstation the place to set up shared folders is VM>Settings>Options tab, I expect Server is the same.

[fink]

I'm using Virtualbox. It has shared folders and I've added a couple but I'm unsure how to get the virtual machine to find them so far.

[SuperSparks]

Unfortunately I haven't ever got around to really exploring Virtual Box. But if it's anything like VMWare or Virtual PC, the shared folders should appear in Windows Explorer in the virtual machine. If that doesn't work, there should be an option to create another virtual drive (more than one if you want), which will appear in Explorer as a separate hard drive.

[fink]

According to forum threads at virtualbox.org you need to have a Vista virtual install as well to be able to copy a vista config file into virtual box to make the share work.

Hmmph.

I'll play with this for a little while then start over with VMware.

[DVOM]

I'm running W7 as a VM on host XP using VMWare Workstation. I don't mess with the "shared folders" thingy as I couldn't get it to work early on.

The real relationship between the host and the client is that of 2 machines on the same network. So I just share out the drives I want on the host and get at them thru the network from the client.

[fink]

I tried that as well but couldn't get the Virtual machine to see the network. Could've been a
permissions issue.

I've uninstalled/deleted everything and am going to try again later with either MS virtualPC or VMware.

[fink]

I've set it up with VMware. Much better. Faster response, sees the network, proper full screen capability (vbox just expanded the blank borders) and better tools. Transfer wizard worked this time as well.. was an issue with seeing the optical drive.

I'll have to use W7 for a while before I come up with any opinions but so far I have no negative impressions.

[DVOM]

I just tried VirtualBox myself, gotta say it was a PITA. First I tried importing my vmware image, that didn't work, then tried "repairing" the vmware image and that didn't work.

So I finally just reinstalled W7 into VirtualBox, that took about an hour. Then, as you said, it couldn't see the network, and the guest tools wouldn't install.

It doesn't look like VirtualBox is quite ready for prime time.

[SuperSparks]

Frankly that was my experience with Virtual Box too, but it was a while back when I tried it. I was under the impression that it was supposed to be considerably improved since then