Korean Job Discussion Forums

nobbyken · Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Location: Yongin ^^

Hi,

I've installed Virtual PC 2007 on my Vista machine, and set installed XP for Virtual to use.
However, I can't get a straight forward internet connection.
Found some answers on google, but I need advice in "laymans terms" about how to set up a standard connection (non-wireless).

Thanks
NK

keetrainchild · Joined: 06 May 2008

You haven't figured out how to establish a working internet connection on your virtual PC client (XP), even though you can connect fine to the internet on the host (Vista), right?

It should be simple. When you first start Virtual PC, click your virtual PC, then click settings. It will show a list of virtual hardware for your virtual PC. Click Networking, then to the right, set your number of network adapters to one. Then on the drop-down list next to Adapter 1, choose the actual physical network adapter on your host computer that you want to connect through. Click ok, boot your virtual PC, and it should work.

The last time that I installed XP on Virtual PC, it didn't require any additional settings. Just configure the network adapter before you boot the virtual machine, install Windows, and it works. Since you apparently installed XP first, you much need to set it up by installing a driver in device manager, or going to the control panel and running the new hardware wizard.

SuperHero · Joined: 10 Dec 2003 Location: Superhero Hideout

What's the point of running XP in a virtual set up? Honestly Vista is a superior product.

keetrainchild · Joined: 06 May 2008

I thought that I replied to this earlier, but apparently it didn't work.

Anyway, Virtual Machines are helping for various reasons: You can test other operating systems on them without severely altering your hard drive. You can sometimes run certain programs on XP that won't work on Vista (which is becoming rarer and rarer). You can run programs that might be unsafe in a sandbox environment. You can test programs that you've written for compatibility with XP (or another OS).

I use Linux, and I have a Vista installation on another partition, but I keep an XP virtual machine ready to run so that I won't need to reboot if I need to run some Windows program that won't work in WINE.

nobbyken · Joined: 07 Jun 2006 Location: Yongin ^^

Thanks chaps, very helpful.
Much appreciated.

diver · Joined: 16 Jun 2003

eamo · Joined: 08 Mar 2003 Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.

diver · Joined: 16 Jun 2003

SuperHero · Joined: 10 Dec 2003 Location: Superhero Hideout

keetrainchild · Joined: 06 May 2008

Another reason why Vista performed badly when it first came out was faulty drivers. I installed Vista on my home computer just after it was released, and while it was ok for normal use, the games that I played on it worked quite badly. It wasn't Microsoft's fault, though. Vista uses a new driver model, and many companies hadn't (and some even still haven't) written proper Vista drivers. As a result, some games were much choppier than they should have been.

The problem wasn't confined to Vista, though; I tried something similar with a 64-bit edition of XP, and had the same problem. Software designers aren't adopting the new paradigm as quickly as (I think) they should. Admittedly, I'm not a software designer, but I think that they should focus on optimizing things for the new technology, rather than maintaining endless backward compatibility.

Anyway, Vista is a good operating system. Entirely apart from the eye candy, it has as a new driver model, it's moving toward a sane conception of user permissions and rights (ie, making a definite barrier between kernel, userspace, and administrative rights and not requiring all programs to be run in administrative mode), it has a new driver model and it treats memory more effectively by trying to keep it as full as possible.

I know that sounds weird: Using memory effectively by trying to keep it as full as possible? But imagine this: You load your favourite browser and run it for an hour. Then you close the program and leave your computer. You return a few hours later and run the same browser. Which would you rather have, the browser still loaded in RAM, or needing to load the browser again from the hard disk? I know which one I would prefer, and Vista does it. Memory can be cleared and refreshed nearly instantaneously (from a human perspective), so if something needs to load and you have no free RAM, it takes a few milliseconds to clear all that RAM to make space. However, if you clear everything from RAM when the user closes it, it will just need to load again from the hard drive when the user wants to open it again, and hard drives are vastly slower than RAM.

I read a recent benchmark comparing XP SP3 to Vista SP1 to Windows 7 beta (or release candidate; I forgot which). Overall, Vista was faster than XP, and even the release candidate/beta of Windows 7 was competitive.

Now, Vista won't run well with 512MB RAM. It might run ok with 1GB, but even then it might be slower than XP. With 2GB or more RAM, though, it seems to be faster overall than XP. Also, if you want, you can disable the advanced desktop effects, prefetch, and various other services and programs (just like you can in XP) to make it faster.

diver · Joined: 16 Jun 2003

I have a choice between 32 bit and 64 bit Vista. The builder warned me that I might have trouble running programs in the 64 bit, while the 32 bit will be compatible for most stuff I want to do.

Is 32 the best way to go, or should I plan for the future and get the 64bit now?

I am not much of a gamer, so I am not THAT worried about speed, but I do a lot of multi-tasking, and I want to run Sloodle (Second Life module for Moodle).

keetrainchild · Joined: 06 May 2008

I would use the 64-bit version, unless you reply on some really legacy software, like 16-bit programs, or something from the early days of Windows 95. In my experience, everything works fine on 64-bit Windows. Even games run very well, if not better, on a 64-bit installation. It used to be that 64-bit Vista was worse in terms of game performance (and performance in general), especially when it was first released, but that's not true anymore. Besides, 64-bit will be the standard; more and more software is being written with 64-bit systems in mind.

You could read this article, which gives mixed results, but as far as gaming is concerned, seems to favour x64:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2280808,00.asp

Or this favourable article comparing XP, Vista, and 7 (it doesn't compare 32 and 64-bit software, but it's interesting):

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236