Summary of personal use of virtual machines under Windows 7: Virtual PC, VMware and VirtualBox

Virtual PC:

If you want to do Windows virtual machine, Virtual PC is the best choice in the previous system. When using Vista system, it has installed MSDOS6.2, 7.1, Windows3.1. 3.2, 95, 98, me, xp, 2000, 2003, Vista, 2008, Win7 almost all found Windows operating system. As MS's own products, it is very convenient to use under its own platform, with small memory footprint and fast startup.

Network, that is, without bridging or sharing a virtual network card with NAT, it can be used directly as an ordinary computer on the same subnet. You can access the Internet without any network settings. For example, your gateway is 192.168.0.1. Your IP is 192.168.0.135, and your virtual machine's IP may be 192.168.0.136.

A disk that cannot be installed by other virtual machines can be installed.

I don't know why in the Win7 environment, the previous Virtual PC can not be installed, only a dedicated version can be installed, there is also a name called Windows XP Mode, which means that only XP virtual machine can be used. After installing this in Win7, you can directly use the XP virtual machine without having to find the installation disk. This makes it easier for users who are reluctant to leave XP, causing more people to flow to other virtual machine products.

XP Mode under Win7 does not support dragging files directly into the virtual machine, but all drive letters of the main disk will be automatically mapped to network hard disks for easy sharing of files. The hard disk space of the main disk is about 130G by default, which is dynamically expanded. The actual capacity is only a few hundred meters when starting.

For a long time, I didn't find how to create a virtual machine. I originally clicked "Windows Virtual PC" in the Start menu:

Not sure? Please click here to view the original image (larger image).

Then in the middle of the "Burn" and "New Folder" in the display control bar under the toolbar (if any) in the Explorer that opens, there is a "Create Virtual Machine", pay attention to the settings. The location of the primary hard drive and the differential hard drive.

VMware:

This has been used for the longest time, at least 5 years, installed N kinds of Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac system, there is only one version, and later has a branch, Basically, I have been using Workstation products. It is now recognized that the best use of a green version of 6.0.5, only a few dozen M, because I am willing to let it take up space, so I have been using the full version, this month has a new version, 7.0.0 build-203739, about 500M, can be used directly after the virtual machine file generated by the previous version, compatibility is good, VMware Tools can also be used normally, but you can also use the latest. Once installed, you can drag files directly into the virtual machine.

This software was originally used because of its snapshot system, which allows you to create system snapshots and restores at any boot time. It is mainly used to debug software and tools that are easy to generate blue screens. It is very practical. Now in the 7 version, the function of recording Record has been added, which is quite ribbed.

The bad thing is that it will virtualize two network cards when installing, and you can virtualize more virtual network cards in the settings. Generally, you can use Bridge Bridge. The virtual machine is online, and the NAT method has not been used. The reason why I don't like it is because I can't access the Internet after using SP2 patch when using Vista SP1. It took me a long time to know that the system will use a virtual network card as the main network card. Of course, it will always show that the unidentified network can't connect. The gateway does not go online. Like VirtualBox, it modifies the NIC settings of the computer itself.

The hard disk can be set to dynamic expansion or fixed size. I usually set it to a fixed size of 8 G. If it is an XP system, it is enough to install a VS2008. The fixed size is said to be enough. Faster, I use a single logical hard disk to do the buffering of the virtual machine disk, leaving about 100G.

It seems that from the beginning of 6.0.5, VMware has started to support D3D, so playing 3D games in virtual machines is not a problem. As long as the memory is large enough and the graphics card is good enough, you can realize the plug-in function of the game. . For me, it is convenient to debug XNA3D games in other operating systems. It is necessary to know that XNA itself has high performance requirements for graphics cards and can be used in virtual graphics cards.

If the file is too large, you can open the file sharing function, and the small file will directly enter the screen:

VMware has another function as a Visual Studio The plugin is used. If you have previously installed Viusal Studio 2008, it will be displayed in the About:

Function Menu in Viusal Studio 2008:

Summary: very good and very powerful

VirtualBox:

This is a recent trial, Sun's products, is a lightweight virtual machine platform, the latest version 3.0.10, complete installation package Dozens of M, the function is relatively simple, the snapshot function is called backup and quick fix. It is not very convenient to jump between different snapshots. You can set whether to enable 3D acceleration, but you can't run the XNA game I debug.

Virtual Windows, although installed with its own plug-ins, can not achieve the function of file drag and drop.

In terms of file sharing, it is called “data space” here. In the state of shutdown, first select a directory of this machine to add to the fixed allocation column:

Then right click on my computer in the virtual machine and select "Map Network Drive". In the folder browsing, "VirtualBox Shared Foders" in the whole network selects the folder just shared, and then you can map it. Used for a drive letter in my computer.

Others have not found any highlights, I look forward to the old user advice.

Virtual Machine For Win7 Charges Latest Version Installation Package Size Features Virtual PC XP Mode Free - 548M (including an XP system) is tightly integrated with Windows, and can only be installed with Windows VMware Workstation for a charge of 7.0497M Numerous, the function is too much to use VirtualBox free 3.0.1069M light, the general application is enough

I hope this article can help you.