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Virtual PC performance?

macagain

macagain

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 1, 2002
357
123
ok, for the last year and a half, i've been living a double life, mac at home, but windoze for work.

now that microsoft has announced exchange support for entourage X, switching over is actually becoming plausible.

remaining problems: the occassional project plan in MS Project that needs reviewing, and the odd Visio diagram to put together.

...Virtual PC to the rescue!

Does anyone out there use VPC on a (semi) regular basis? Is it tolerable?

thanks
-macagain
 
I use it quite a bit, mostly for kazaa and a few ms access database things i get for school, on a resonabley new machine VP 6 with Win2k or 98 is tolerable. It wont amaze you, but its useable, assuming you have lots of ram in there, i got a 800 dp with 1 gig of ram and it runs win2k well. So if ya have a good mac, vpc is a very viable option.
 
Good to hear that the performance of VPC with Win 2k is acceptable on the DP 800. What version of VPC is that?

I am awaiting my new DP 1.25 with 1.5 G. ram. I also ordered VPC. 6.0 DOS as I have my own licensed version of Win XP. Anyone else with a similar setup? I realize that it will not "blaze" along as my AMD XP 2000+ does but I am hoping that it will not be an absolute dog.

My other concern is whether or not loading my own copy of XP onto VPC DOS will be difficult. I would hate to have to unplug everything so as to have the local tech do it for me... at about $60/hour. Unfortunately, the VPC 6.0 with operating system is over $400 cdn, whereas the DOS version is $200.

Mike
 
Originally posted by mdeschenes

My other concern is whether or not loading my own copy of XP onto VPC DOS will be difficult. I would hate to have to unplug everything so as to have the local tech do it for me... at about $60/hour. Unfortunately, the VPC 6.0 with operating system is over $400 cdn, whereas the DOS version is $200.
Click to expand...
Don't worry, it's easy. Just set the CD ROM as being bootable in your VPC Prefs, then so long as your XP disc is bootable (I would think that it is) when you start your VPC it will just boot from it as a normal PC would.
 
Originally posted by hugemullens
I use it quite a bit, mostly for kazaa and a few ms access database things i get for school, on a resonabley new machine VP 6 with Win2k or 98 is tolerable.
Click to expand...

I am so frustrated with VPC!!! Whenever I try to install Kazaa, it crashes. It's so annoying! Did you have any problems installing it (whether
"it" be Kazaa or Kazaa Lite)?

So, for me, VPC wasn't worth it, unless it starts working...
 
Originally posted by hugemullens
I use it quite a bit, mostly for kazaa and a few ms access database things i get for school, on a resonabley new machine VP 6 with Win2k or 98 is tolerable. It wont amaze you, but its useable, assuming you have lots of ram in there, i got a 800 dp with 1 gig of ram and it runs win2k well. So if ya have a good mac, vpc is a very viable option.
Click to expand...

When you use kazaa, do you get normal speeds or does vpc slow the connection down too? I have vpc and am thinking about installing kazaa on it but don't want to do it if i'm only going to be getting like 5kb/sec.
 
I had absolutely zero problems with installing kazaa, and vpc works well. The only thing I don't know is how to get files I download in my vpc to my mac.

FYI, I had no problems installing my xp onto a dos vpc.

I have a 1gig TiBook with 1 gig ram and vpc v.5
 
Originally posted by mcrain
The only thing I don't know is how to get files I download in my vpc to my mac.
Click to expand...

I can help you there :D. Ok open up VPC, now at the bottom left of the window there are all the little icons, now the one of the farthest to the right looks like a puzzle piece. Click, hold and select "install VPC additions" let it runs its course. When you are done, you will be able to seamlessly drag your files across. (I hope, or I look like a complete fool)
 
Received my new DP 1.25 yesterday - and spent a long time setting it up. Did load VPC 6.0 DOS as per instructions, then loaded my copy of XP Home. All of this went as planned, after a great deal of reading and "trial-and-error". Opened it up, OK. It was slow, slow, slow. Allocated a little over 400 Megs of RAM. I have 1.25 G Ram available. I understand that the OS 10.2.3 upgrade will address that issue, however, I downloaded it from my PC, saved the upgrade to disk (burned CD) and tried to load it onto the Mac HD. It started to decompress the file then began the step by step process of legal stuff. When it came time to actually upgrade OS 10.2, it would not let me. The message stated that the disk would not allow it ( had a "!" symbol over to of the drive). What am I doing wrong?

Also, I have read previous threads. It seems that importing my PC programs from the Mac Drive to VPC is tricky. Will try W-_-W's suggestion + print the instructions from the CD. Hope I can figure this one out. Any help would be appreciated.

Mike
 
Re: Virtual PC performance?

Originally posted by macagain
ok, for the last year and a half, i've been living a double life, mac at home, but windoze for work.

now that microsoft has announced exchange support for entourage X, switching over is actually becoming plausible.

remaining problems: the occassional project plan in MS Project that needs reviewing, and the odd Visio diagram to put together.

...Virtual PC to the rescue!

Does anyone out there use VPC on a (semi) regular basis? Is it tolerable?

thanks
-macagain
Click to expand...

I use VPC on a TiBook 800 for exactly that purpose. No problem.
 
hmm................i just got vpc 6 with dos, slapped in the win2k disk, and installed it to a disk image. When ever i need to install a program, i use it JUST like any ol' pc. Even for the standard kazza (the one of the main page of download.com), anything. VPC extensions installed after i booted to the OS, and i havent had any problems at all. I hope everyone can figure out there problems, but its been the simple for me.
 
Well I run VPC just for kazza on a regular basis since limewire really isn't that great to find stuff. Anybody have some info on Carracho, but to get back to the point I have an ibook 800 with 384 ram and it runs kazza well enough, but do yourself a big favor D/L the .2.4 update cause you well see a very noticeable speed boost.
 
Go to Connectix support and read the "opimizing VPC" Section. It really helps as 10.2.4 seems to. I wasn't sure it was going to work for me, but I am quite comfortable now. Give it 256 mb or more of ram too. I'm running it on my 12" PB/640 with 320 for VPC..
 
Hi!

I've got two additional questions:

Which Windows Version offers the best performance under VirtualPC (Win95/Win98/WinME/WinNT/Win2000/WinXP)?

Is it possible to run old DOS games (like Monkey Island or Kings Quest)?

Thanx!

--cionheart
 
I have been thinking about getting VPC for my dual 1ghz powermac i have 512 ram and 80 gig. Which VPC should i get and will it run good? I have been hearing mixed messages so i dont want to buy it if it wont work right.
 
I have VPC 5 running on 10.2.4 (was 10.2.3 till yesterday) and whenever I launch it I get an "application launch failure" due to a "shared library error". Does anyone know what this means or how to fix it? Thanks in adance for any advice. Side note: if I keep launching it, after a couple of minutes it will launch and run fine.
 
Problems upgrading Jaguar

Originally posted by mdeschenes
Received my new DP 1.25 yesterday - and spent a long time setting it up. Did load VPC 6.0 DOS as per instructions, then loaded my copy of XP Home. All of this went as planned, after a great deal of reading and "trial-and-error". Opened it up, OK. It was slow, slow, slow. Allocated a little over 400 Megs of RAM. I have 1.25 G Ram available. I understand that the OS 10.2.3 upgrade will address that issue, however, I downloaded it from my PC, saved the upgrade to disk (burned CD) and tried to load it onto the Mac HD. It started to decompress the file then began the step by step process of legal stuff. When it came time to actually upgrade OS 10.2, it would not let me. The message stated that the disk would not allow it ( had a "!" symbol over to of the drive). What am I doing wrong?

Also, I have read previous threads. It seems that importing my PC programs from the Mac Drive to VPC is tricky. Will try W-_-W's suggestion + print the instructions from the CD. Hope I can figure this one out. Any help would be appreciated.

Mike
Click to expand...
I had the same trouble trying to upgrade from 10.2.1 to 10.2.3 I think that it is because I didn't download the combo update. You need to get it instead of the regular 10.2.3 update becuase the 10.2.3 will only update from10.2.2. Home that helps.
 
VPC with Win 98 sucks

VPC with Win 98 really sucks. Not only is it sluggish even on a 700MHz, 384 MB eMac, it also crashes at least twice while using it, although that is typical of MS products. I have heard that XP is more stable, so I would get that version of VPC instead. BTW I have seen various versions of VPC on Limewire, including OS packs. However, some of the files have disk images that won't expand.
 
I have spent the better part of this entire weekend trying to get VPC 6 (DOS) with my own version of XP home to run properly on my new DP 1.25. Even with 1.25 Gb ram it crashed CONSTANTLY. It even caused OSX to crash so badly that the computer would no longer restart. I had to insert restore, wipe out the HD and restart from scratch.

Since removing VPC, my DP is working just fine. Being a newbie to OSX + VPC, I guess that I am going through growing pains. I cannot get it to work properly, cannot make heads or tails of the instructions that came with it on how to open a PC file from my Hard Drive, and cannot believe I wasted $200 of hard earned $ for this crap.

BTW. Does anyone know if File Maker Pro 6.0 comes with Troi plug-ins - I need it to run a PC program based in FileMaker. Also, anyone know how to change keyboard option from French to English - many of my punctuation marks seem to yield french accents over an E instead.

Mike
 
Anyone try running XBConnect with VPC??? That and several other programs I install on VPC (2kpro or XP or 98) install okay, but when I try to run them i get a message saying "This program has doesn something bad and has been shut down... an error log was created" or something.... can't use it..

It did that with XBConnect and DVD2One and others...

anyone else have this problem?? what can I do?
 
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