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Virtual PC: Accepting the Inevitable

Schiffi

Schiffi

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 22, 2003
545
0
Missouri
I am looking into getting VPC soon. I have my own copy of Win2000 so I'll be buying the DOS version of VPC and installing win2000. How does VPC work? Will I have to repartition a drive into NTFS? If it runs from an image, how much space does it take up? and how fast does it start? Things like that.

I'll be using it mostly for getting videos to work under Windows and maybe playing some old, old 2D games. And possibly running Flash. Thanks.
 
It runs from an image on your hard-drive, which looks just like a normal file.

Looking at my images, Win 2000 is currently at 3GiB, but they dynamically adjust their size according to what you have on, and I've got quite a bit of junk.

Performance is acceptable, you need L3 cache and you need to keep on top of Microsoft Service packs. Also disable virtual memory within Windows. Windows 2000 performs the best out of all the Windows OS's with VPC 6 however.

Startup and shutdown is slow, it's best to save state, that's faster but uses more of your HDD space.

AppleMatt
 
Originally posted by FredAkbar
How do you do this? This has come up in a couple other Virtual-PC-related threads, but no one has actually said how to do this.

--Fred
Click to expand...

Disabling Virtual Memory in windows is not a good idea unless you have at least 128MB for win95 or 98 and 512MB for win2000 or XP. However Win2000 and XP both need 1GB to work properly.

Anyway to do it right click on 'My Computer' and select 'Properties'. Then select the 'Advanced' tab and it will be ether the 'Virtual Memory' or 'Performace' button, depending on your version of windows. Then set the swap file/v memory to 0.
 
Wow, you really need 1 gig of RAM to use win2K properly with VPC in OS 10.2? I was kind of hoping it would be okay with 512 MB of RAM...
 
Speaking of RAM, is speed affected by how much VRAM (video RAM) I give my Virtual PC? I always give it as much as VPC lets me (16 MB). It always just says that the amount of VRAM affects how high of a resolution you can have it at in 32-bit color mode, but does it affect screen redraw speed, and such, in general as well?

--Fred
 
VM, RAM, VRAM, Etc.

I tried setting VM to 0 on Win2K-SP4 and when I rebooted I got a error message saying I should change the VM settings to the recommended values. VPC also seemed slower to me. When I went in to change VM back to the original values, I got another message saying that a temporary paging file of 20 MB had been created at boot time, and I should change the settings to the recommended values.

I guess that, at least on Win2K, you cannot disable VM, you can only cripple it :) BTW, I've run VPC and Win2K with both 192 MB and 256 MB of RAM with good results. I have 1 GB total in my PB.

VRAM settings only affect the display resolution and color depth; performance is not affected. I have mine set at 4 MB, and I can still do full screen on my TiBook with "millions of colors".

I find the "save and quit" feature is fast and works well. I've also kept VPC up and put my PB to sleep without problems.

However, even Connectix states that VPC is not recommended for heavy duty graphics applications, such as 3d games, graphics modeling, etc.

All in all, VPC6 on my TiBook does everything I need, and I'm very pleased with it. For the few WinDoze apps I need to run, it's great to not have to maintain a separate machine.

HTH
 
vpc sucks big and hard. i've found it unusable on any machine with any OS installed. it is just a slug, period. what is the attraction with running this horrid piece of noveltyware?
 
Originally posted by tjwett
vpc sucks big and hard. i've found it unusable on any machine with any OS installed. it is just a slug, period. what is the attraction with running this horrid piece of noveltyware?
Click to expand...
What are the details? What version of VPC? What Mac OS? What HW? On my TiBook 1Ghz, 1 GB, OS X 10.2 it works great. I've used it during consulting gigs to run MS client SW that doesn't exist on the Mac with unqualified success. If you're trying to play your favorite 3D WinDoze game, then it isn't going to work very well, but then the vendor told you that to begin with.
 
Originally posted by daveL
What are the details? What version of VPC? What Mac OS? What HW? On my TiBook 1Ghz, 1 GB, OS X 10.2 it works great. I've used it during consulting gigs to run MS client SW that doesn't exist on the Mac with unqualified success. If you're trying to play your favorite 3D WinDoze game, then it isn't going to work very well, but then the vendor told you that to begin with.
Click to expand...

i don't know. i was issued VPC 5 to run on a dual gig Power Mac with 1.2 gigs RAM and i could barely enter text in Notepad. it was just a nightmare. i've come to terms with the fact that i am willing to give up any Windows software as long as i never have to touch VPC again. sounds like you've had better luck than me. glad it's working out for someone.
 
Originally posted by AppleMatt
Startup and shutdown is slow, it's best to save state, that's faster but uses more of your HDD space.

AppleMatt
Click to expand...

I've found a considerable increase in the starup and shutdown of VPC in Panther.

Overall I've found a considerable increase in speed on my TiPB 867 with Panther.

I wouldn't recommend using XP in VPC unless you have a top of the line mac. 2000 runs slow enough as it is.
 
Another question, has anyone gotten a Windows only webcam (usb) and used it successfully under VCP and using MSN Messenger?
 
Originally posted by Juventuz
I've found a considerable increase in the starup and shutdown of VPC in Panther.
Click to expand...

Firstly, are you talking about just the launch time of the VPC application, or the launch time of the actual Windows PC when you "start it up"?

And secondly, when you say "increase," do you mean it starts up faster, or that it takes longer to start up? The rest of your post seems to indicate that Panther makes things faster in VPC.
 
Originally posted by FredAkbar
Firstly, are you talking about just the launch time of the VPC application, or the launch time of the actual Windows PC when you "start it up"?
Click to expand...

I'm talking about the launch time of VPC AND the launch time of the actual Windows PC.

And secondly, when you say "increase," do you mean it starts up faster, or that it takes longer to start up? The rest of your post seems to indicate that Panther makes things faster in VPC.
Click to expand...

When I say increase I mean is starts up quicker. I'm not referring to the applications in VPC, rather VPC itself seems to boot faster.
 
Sure thing.... Any other q's about Panther just ask.

Overall, I'm content with VPC6 for what I do. I wish there was something that was better, but for what it is it's ok.
 
I got VPC running with XP Pro and Win2KPro. My mac is an AGP 500 with an ATI 8500, and OS X 10.2.6, QE enabled. The main issue with XP and Win2K even on Wintel PC's is RAM. I recommend for both the Mac and Wintel PC's at least 384KB and personally reserve 512KB for my set up. Win2K seems faster than XP Pro and this is true on my Dell as well. I can't emphasize the importance of RAM and RAM is cheap.

Make sure after installing XP or Win2K on VPC that you turn off all of Windows eye candy stuff, such as shadowing, the Luna interface on Win XP, dragging windows and Windows (Not Macs) anti-aliasing. These features bog down even my Dell. You can get to them by right clicking on the Windows desktop and selecting properties.

Also do not use any of win2k/XP's services, such as firewalls and sharing if you could help it. You may want to go to this link which will show you how to turn off other Windows services, that simply are using up memory and processor time. http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/winxp_services/

Finally, Although it may take you up to 6 hours on a DSL link, make sure you run Windows Update ( and run it a number of times after each re-boot) until all the critical updates are installed. As I said earlier this may require up to 6 virtual reboots and upwards of 6 hours. This is the same issue every Wintel user goes through.
 
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