hybrid actual/virtual: WinXP hosted by Windows 7 or some other Windows O/S [closed]

Question

QUESTION: Is there any way to configure Windows 7 (or perhaps a MSFT Server O/S) so that it has normal access to the hardware, such as a video accelerator card, for enhanced performance, while hosting a virtual instance of Windows-XP Pro?

BACKGROUND: I'm a software developer trying to preserve about five years of software development tools and database engines installed on my PC, which is acting sort of flaky. The DVD drive tray is sticking, and the PC seems to have misplaced a gig of RAM somewhere along the way, showing only 1GB instead of the 2GB that were installed. And the hard drive has started to make some funny noises. Time for a new PC.

But when I get the new PC, I don't want to have to reinstall all of the software and all of the patches to the software, as that would take man-weeks. I explored the VMWare option but because of the inadequate video performance it isn't the ideal solution for my situation. I also need to render and edit some HD video shot at 720p/60fps.

So I decided to port the ISO image of the WinXP Pro installation to a new PC using Acronis True Image and Plus Pack, which I bought yesterday. But that path seems less than ideal, because it merely postpones the inevitable, solving the immediate problem only. At some point I will need to move forward to a newer O/S and will still have to preserve the older XP stuff.

Is there any way to configure Windows 7 (or perhaps a MSFT Server O/S) so that it has normal access to the hardware, like a video accelerator card, for enhanced performance, while hosting a virtual instance of Windows-XP Pro? I'd like to toggle between them. The WinXP image would be like a walking swaddled mummy in a horror flick --its access to hardware resources would be virtualized-- but the host O/S would have fast video performance etc. I could thus keep all of my old work "alive" while getting the performance advantages of the non-virtual O/S when it is required. Can this kind of hybrid be created with any Windows O/S?

Answer 1

You can backup the XP machine with clonezilla and try restoring it to a virtual machine with VMWare workstation hosted under 7. I use windows 7 base and freeBSD apache for my servers. The 7 uses native computer resources and the Linux uses a user-defined amount of RAM, hard drive space, processor cores or speed, etc. You can indeed install XP onto a virtual machine but you may not be able to put EXACTLY the clonezilla clone in it since old and new hardware do not mix well. If it's Possible to find a less picky clone method I see no reason for this not to work.

You will need to still do your research as to have the best chance for success.

You said you'd rather not do VMWare because of video performance. Can you edit the videos on the windows 7 computer? VMWare allows shared folders and drives between host and virtual.

Answer 2

Well, I'm quite surprised you were able to that kind of video editing with such an old machine. Anyway, the way i see it you have 3 options: 1) Windows 7 - VirtualBox VirtualBox implements almost all of VMWARE workstation features including experimental video acceleration. This will actually be the best scenario imho. 2) Windows 7 + Windows XP mode Windows 7 does offer the possibility of running a Windows XP instance inside it -> http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx 3) Windows 7 + Vmware Client 3 (free) It also has experimental video accel. support.

In case 1 and 3 perhaps you'll be able to use VMWARE converter to convert your existing hardware to a VMWARE Virtual machine. VMWare Converter actually changes all that is needed for you from while creating a VM from your existing running Windows XP installation. That would help you to use the resulting VM with option 3 or with option 1 as using a VMWARE Virtual Machine in Virtual Box should be fairly simple, there's a lot of info on how to do this in the internet. Myself i would use VirtualBox, in this case. That's because it implements most if not all of VMware Workstation's features at no cost. VMware client is very limited.

As for migrating your current system for option 2 i believe you could use this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415 , but i don't think it does the whole job, i've never worked much with MS virtualization so i really don't know.

Btw, performance will NOT be crappy. Actually it will depend a lot on how fast your HDD drive is and how much RAM you can give to the VM. Im my opinion, RAM (for the same reasons as a non-virtualized PC) and HDD speed are the most important factors for performance not to be crappy.

Hope this helped,

Mario