Is there an easy way?? - Vista as Guest

[kpayton07]

Im considering adding Windows Vista as a guest OS on my XP Laptop. I have a Dual Core processor with 2 Gig of Memory.

Can it even be done at all? Id really like to run it but I don't want to kill my laptop performance either.

Thoughts?

[louyo]

I have run Vista as a guest on my 2.0Ghz dual core laptop (3GB RAM) without any trouble. I have one drive with openSUSE as the host, another with XP as a host and still another with Vista Business as the host. They all run a Vista guest about as well as can be expected for Vista...

Lou

[kpayton07]

LOL - How much RAM and Drive space do you have dedicated to Vista?

I realize Vista is what it is.. Clugy beast that it is I just need something I can toy with without killing my Host

I was reading and some people have said to just leave 512 on the Host and dedicate 1.5 to Vista.

Thoughts?

[louyo]

I give it a gig. I run Visual Studio 2008 in it and it performs very well, I don't see any swapping. I did turn off all the eye candy, no fading, etc I also use Windows classic themes. You will also need to turn off any speed step stuff in the laptop, there are several posts about performance of VM's on laptops. When running Linux as a host, I have to make a change in one of the processor settings to avoid running in slow motion and then it performs very well. I often run 2 different Vista guests at the same time, one for developing and one for debug. No problems. The development VM uses about 23GB or so on disk. I did add a second hard drive in place of the DVD drive, it is a 7200 RPM 100GB drive.

Lou

[birdie]

Vista is a resource hog, so even if you allocate it 1GB of RAM it won't run really fast and will thrash your HDD.

This can be remedied though:

1) Disable Aero and enable Classic UI

2) Disable all unnecessary services

3) Disable ReadyBoost (contrary to MS advertisements it doesn't speed up anything)

4) Disable (Files) Indexer and Windows Defender

Google is your friend.

Enjoy Vista

[kpayton07]

how much drive space should I dedicate? Given that Vista is both a resource hog and drive space hog

[birdie]

Normally Vista itself occupies approximately 14-15GB of disk space + space for your applications + space for your data + etc.

[kpayton07]

So 20 Gig or if I do 15 Gig will it be enough? My fear is with making a VM I have to cap it somewhere so I don't want to short myself

[birdie · Accepted solution]

If you create a virtual HDD of say 30GB (without "Allocate all diskspace now") then most likely you won't run out of free space. And shrinking will help you if you decide to cut the space occupied by your guest.

[kpayton07]

Alright I know this is going to be a stupid question but I have to reload XP in order to get Vista.

Im trying to use the SCSI Driver and when I select it it finds the SCSI Driver but it can't find a Hard Drive??

What gves?

[birdie]

Please, ask your last question by creating a new topic. Thank you.