Novice support: Which VMware product for dual VISTA and XP?

[Poseidon69]

Hi, do you know which VM Ware software do I need to install on my VISTA Laptop (Vaio with 4Gb RAM, 32bit) in order to run XP Operating System?

I tried installing MS Virtual PC 2007 but has no USB support, hence it is not very useful...

Shall I use VMWare ESXi or VMWare Server? Which one is the easiest to install/run for a novice who just wants to run a few XP programs, without downgrading or removing VISTA?

Thanks, Nick

[AWo · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the forums!

Yuo better use VMware Server. This is an application (Hosted Virtualization) running on your host OS whereas ESXi (Bare Metal Virtualization) means you have to boot your host with ESXi and you have to provice disk space which is formatted with the VMFS file system. Thereby useless for the host.

AWo

VCP / VMware vEXPERT 2009

[Poseidon69]

Thank you AWo, that was very useful. I will try installing VMserver - I hope I can do it, as I could not find any installation guides.

Nick

[AWo]

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmserver2.pdf

AWo

VCP / VMware vEXPERT 2009

[RDPetruska]

VMware Server is probably overkill for your usage, as well as unSupported on Vista hosts. I'd just use Player.

[Poseidon69]

Hi,

I red the description of VM Player and says that you can use it to run any virtual machine created by "VMware Fusion, ..., VMware Server , as well as Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machines".

Do you know if VM Player can create a virtual machine (where I can install XP) or do I still need VMServer to create one?

Also I have already installed MS Virtual PC 2007 and already installed XP successfully (but without USB support). Do you think I can use VMPlayer to open the Virtual Machine created by MS Virtual PC? And if this is possible will it have USB support? Shall I remove Virtual PC2007 and uninstall its Virtual Machine, in order to have a clear installation of VM Player?

Many thanks

[RDPetruska]

You can also use 3rd party tools (such as my own VMX Builder) to create and edit virtual machines for use in Player. See my profile for website.

You can use VMs created with Virtual PC - but there may be some compatibility issues. Make sure you remove any of the MS Additions from the guest before you import it for use under VMware Player (those are the MS drivers/etc. for their virtual hardware, which aren't the same as VMware's virtual hardware).

[Poseidon69]

Thank you, I will try that :smileygrin: