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Microsoft Virtual PC

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Microsoft Virtual PC

Virtual PC 2007 for Windows with emulated Windows 2000.
Developer	Microsoft Corporation
Latest release	2007 (Windows), 7.0.3 (Mac) / February 19, 2007 (Windows), August 14, 2007 (Mac)
OS	Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Mac OS (deprecated)
Genre	Emulator, Virtual machine
License	Proprietary, but free to download and use
Website	for Windows for Mac

Microsoft Virtual PC is a virtualization suite for Microsoft Windows operating systems, and an emulation suite for Mac OS X on PowerPC-based systems. The software was originally written by Connectix, and was subsequently acquired by Microsoft. In July 2006 Microsoft released the Windows-hosted version as a free product. In August 2006 Microsoft announced the Macintosh-hosted version would not be ported to Intel-based Macintoshes, effectively discontinuing the product as PowerPC-based Macintoshes are no longer manufactured. Virtual PC emulates a standard PC and its associated hardware. Thus, it can be used to run nearly all operating systems available for the PC. However, issues can arise when trying to install uncommon operating systems that have not been specifically targeted in the development of Virtual PC.

1 Emulated environment
2 Emulating Linux-based environments
3 Version history
4 Intel-based Mac support
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

Emulated environment

Virtual PC emulates a 32-bit Intel Pentium 4 processor (but virtualizes the host processor on Windows versions) with an Intel 440BX chipset, a standard SVGA VESA graphics card (S3 Trio 64 PCI with 4 MByte Video RAM, adjustable in later versions up to 16 MByte), a system BIOS from American Megatrends (AMI), a Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 ISA PnP (native Vista audio when Vista acts as host and guest), and a DEC 21041 (DEC 21140 in newer versions) Ethernet network card. Not all programs are guaranteed to work because they can use undocumented features of hardware, exotic timings, or unsupported opcodes, although overall compatibility can be considered satisfactory.

The Macintosh version of Virtual PC uses dynamic recompilation to translate the x86 code used by a standard PC into equivalent PowerPC code used by a Mac.
The Windows version of Virtual PC also uses dynamic recompilation, but only to translate kernel mode and real mode x86 code into x86 user mode code, while original user mode and virtual 8086 mode code run natively.

It also uses some guest calls traps (especially when using the guest extensions) to accelerate emulation or offer additional features, such as integration with the host environment.

Emulating Linux-based environments

Although installing a Linux-based environment is possible, it is not seamless. For some supported Linux distributions, the guest operating system will need to be installed in text mode, as Microsoft Virtual PC only emulates graphics at 16-bit or 32-bit color depth, not 24-bit. In order to run an X Window user interface, the guest operating system will need to have xorg.conf edited to 16-bit in order to comply with this limitation.^[1] Some websites specialize in listing operating systems that work over Virtual PC, including Linux distributions, so the user can avoid issues when testing those unsupported OS over Virtual PC.^[2]

Version history

Virtual PC 6.1 for Macintosh

The first version of Virtual PC was originally developed by Connectix for the Macintosh and was released in June 1997. Four years later in June 2001, the first version of Virtual PC for Windows, version 4.0, was released. Connectix sold versions of Virtual PC bundled with a variety of operating systems, including many versions of Windows, OS/2, and Red Hat Linux. As it became clear that virtualization was important to the enterprise, Microsoft became interested in the sector and chose to acquire Virtual PC and an (at the time) unreleased product called "Virtual Server" from Connectix in February 2003. Version 5.0 was ported by a third party for running with OS/2 as host. This version also included guest extensions for OS/2 guest, that can be used with Windows, OS/2 or Mac OS X hosts using Virtual PC versions 5, 6 or 7. A new version of the guest extensions was included with Virtual PC 2004. On July 12, 2006, Microsoft released Virtual PC 2004 for Windows as a free product but the Mac version was not made free. The Windows version may be downloaded from here. The equivalent version for Mac, version 7, was the final version of Virtual PC to be released for Mac. On October 11, 2006, Microsoft made available the first public beta release of Virtual PC 2007 to testers. As expected, Virtual PC 2007 is only available for the Windows platform. The main improvements over Virtual PC 2004 are support for hardware virtualization and for Windows Vista as both host and guest (although Vista guests currently cannot make use of Aero Glass due to the limitations of the emulated video hardware). Virtual PC 2007 hosts can also run on 64-bit versions of Windows although 64-bit guests are yet to be supported. Also on the Microsoft Connect website is the beta of Virtual Machine Additions for Linux. On February 19, 2007, Microsoft released the current version of Virtual PC 2007. This version supports Microsoft Windows Vista (Home Basic and Home Premium editions are not supported)[1], but is still able to run, and is available for free.

Intel-based Mac support

Microsoft announced on August 7, 2006 that Virtual PC for Mac would not be ported to the Intel Mac platform. Microsoft stated “alternative solutions offered by Apple and other vendors, combined with a fully packaged retail copy of Windows, will satisfy this need.”^[3] Apple had previously announced and shipped a preview release of Boot Camp. Apple released the final version of Boot Camp with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on October 26, 2007. Boot Camp allows Windows XP or Windows Vista to be installed on a hard drive partition of new Intel-based Macs other than that containing Mac OS X. This allows a user to boot into either Mac OS X or Windows, though not both simultaneously. The inclusion of a solution for running Windows-based applications on Macintosh hardware decreases the need for a Mac OS Intel-based version of Virtual PC.