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Is Virtual PC on Windows 7 x64 only able to virtualize x86 versions of Windows 7?

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Which virtualisation software? Otherwise the answer is it depends on which you are using. – Richard Aug 13 '09 at 9:21
Oh, sorry, Virtual PC. – Svish Aug 13 '09 at 9:32
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As 'Windows Virtual PC' for Windows 7 only emulates a Intel Pentium III, which only supported 32-bit operations, you won't be able to get an x64 version of Windows 7 to work correctly running as a guest. However you will be able to run Windows XP 64-bit as a guest but it will switch down to 32-bit operation.

The Wikipedia article on the subject adds some more information you might appreciate.

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Aha, makes sense. Thanks :) – Svish Aug 13 '09 at 9:53
Just discovered on MSDN that there actually is an x64 version of Virtual PC 2007 as well. Maybe that will allow having x64 guests... – Svish Aug 13 '09 at 10:54
It won't change the emulation packing inside each VM though, so I'm still afraid you'll be out of luck - at least you'll be able to have lots of VMs with all the memory a 64-bit host will give you. – Chopper3 Aug 13 '09 at 11:04
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up vote 1 down vote

I successfully used VirtualBox (which is free and almost 100% open source) to run a Vista x64 guest on a Windows XP 32 bit host, so I assume that it would work with Win 7 x64 on Win 7 32 bit as well.

One thing you need though: hardware assisted virtualization (ie. VT-x on Intel / Pacifica on AMD).

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but VB emulates a 'better' VM environment for it's guests than VPC. – Chopper3 Aug 13 '09 at 11:13
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