Best virtulisation program

[woody.cool]

Hi all,

Apologies if this has been done before.

I'm wanting to use virtulisation technology to run legacy Windows OSes. I intend to run MS-DOS/Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 and/or Windows 98SE this way.

I'll be running this on a Windows XP Professional PC of the following specs:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (@ 2.2GHz)

1GB RAM

nVida GeForce 8500 GTS graphics card (not sure if graphics card will make much difference or not, any opinions on this welcome)

Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (it's a genuine OS, not that it should make any difference tbh)

plenty of hard drive space (I've got nearly 1TB of unused hard drive space!)

and all drives on my system are formatted as NTFS

Currently, I've tried the following solutions:

• Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 SP1 - works ok, but often unpredictable and buggy at times .... at one point, despite my config not stating this, my Win95 VM has 4 floppy drives (F: G: H: I:) .... WTF is going on?
  
• VMware Workstation 6.5.1 - stupidly resource hungry. My VM ran slowly, and my PC ran like crap too.
  
• Sun Virtualbox (unsure of version, but most recent as of last week) - Runs quickly, no 'Guest Additions' (or equivalent) support, no official SVGA driver so had to resort to slightly buggy VESA driver (the VBE driver from Bear Windows), cannot get network to function properly. I've tried EVERY option but my VM cannot communicate with my host PC and no internet in VM.
  
• Qemu 0.10.2 - slightly unpredictable, sometimes emulating Cirrus Logic works, other times it doesn't .... wish it'd make it's bloody mind up. Also, sometimes it's resource hungry, other times it's not !?! WTF? Finally, not very easy to use. I end up having to reboot it and change settings all the time, including changing ISO mounted in the CD drive.
  

Any advice appreciated.

I appreciate that 1GB RAM may not be ideal, but at the moment, I'm money is very tight, so if you just say "get more RAM" I will ignore it, as I intend to do that, once I can afford it!

So yeah, please vote for your favourite virtulisation solution or the one that will most likely meet my needs.

The program must do the following:

• run my legacy OS in a VM without any random 'glitches' (see my above bullet point about Virtual PC)
  
• have 9x driver support for SVGA, Network & Sound (and if possible 3.x drivers for Network and preferably SVGA)
  
• not be too resource hungry (as in, hammer my CPU and hard drive for no f**king reason)
  
• must be acceptable to use. I've got no problems using command line (hey, I've been messing with Qemu with no front-end to it) but on the same note, I don't want to have to invest months learning how to use it (but spending a week learning it is acceptable)
  

Thank you in advance

and apologies if this has been done before.

[jaclaz]

Qemu works allright here.

You might want to use it together with Qemu Manager:

http://www.davereyn.co.uk/

site is down right now, but you can get it from here:

http://www.brothersoft.com/qemu-manager-download-163091.html

Essentially Qemu has the most "legacy" emulated hardware (when compared to the others), and of course it is a bit slower than most of the others.

jaclaz

[woody.cool]

Qemu works allright here.

You might want to use it together with Qemu Manager:

http://www.davereyn.co.uk/

site is down right now, but you can get it from here:

http://www.brothersoft.com/qemu-manager-download-163091.html

Essentially Qemu has the most "legacy" emulated hardware (when compared to the others), and of course it is a bit slower than most of the others.

jaclaz

I've recently been using Qemu and found that my Windows 95 VM is soooooo slow, it's almost unusable at times (p**ses me right off at times) ... it constantly locks up, even when doing basic windows operations (such as opening a window)

I've got it set up as using a 'Standard VGA Card' with 'Soundblaster 16' emulation for sound, no network (at the moment) and emulating a 'Standard ISA PC' .... any tips to make it more usable?

The hard drive is stored in RAW format. Is this the best? or should I use something else (like qcow or qcow2)?

[Queue]

I'd throw my hat in for Virtual PC 2007. I've had a great experience using it on an XPSP3 machine to emulate both 98SE and XP. The only glitch I've encountered is drag/drop support OUT of emulated 98SE hasn't functioned for me, but I also haven't tried to fix it, and I'd expect it not to be a universal issue.

The machine I mainly use for Virtual PC 2007 only has 1GB of RAM and it hasn't been a big a problem. However, I only emulate one OS at a time and generally single-task when emulating.

Queue

[woody.cool]

I'd throw my hat in for Virtual PC 2007. I've had a great experience using it on an XPSP3 machine to emulate both 98SE and XP. The only glitch I've encountered is drag/drop support OUT of emulated 98SE hasn't functioned for me, but I also haven't tried to fix it, and I'd expect it not to be a universal issue.

I tried VPC 2007 ages ago and found that it was missing the Virtual Additions DOS floppy image, so I struggled getting access to CD-ROM in real mode DOS. Maybe it was my installer? Or have MS dropped support for this in 2007?

The machine I mainly use for Virtual PC 2007 only has 1GB of RAM and it hasn't been a big a problem. However, I only emulate one OS at a time and generally single-task when emulating.

I don't intend to run multiple VMs and will be using one VM at a time. I rarely do anything else while that one VM is running, but if the VM is doing something that's taking it's time, I'll get sidetracked and start browsing forums in my host OS.

[GrofLuigi]

I use QEMU, XP on XP (as a kind of sandbox for installing apps/testing). I like it because it's extremely well behaved > doesn't write to registry or outside its directory (unless told to do so). I would never install tons of services and what not just for this.

The speed isn't that bad, approx what you'd expect out of real hardware with that specs. I don't use networking, just UltraIso to get files in (the cdrom image) and WinImage to get files out (of the HDD). Otherwise I'd have another 'computer' to maintain.

I see the host OS is idling when the emulation is (with the kqemu driver). If the WMI service is enabled (which I never have), the emulated System Properties show the same CPU specs as the host.

Woody.cool, I've noticed the same issues with the Cirrus emulation with any version greater than 9. Most often, BSOD. Nothing worked short of reinstalling the emulated OS from scratch. I use QCow image format which WinImage can read (except NTFS with disabled short names). Maybe post your command line here?

GL

[GrofLuigi]

(Attempting to edit my reply brings a broken version with <br> tags and what not... Proof that new versions (of board software) aren't always better. )

I wanted just to add that I'm not sure if the image format is Qcow or Raw (I changed it one time, but did I keep it? Don't remember, sorry).

GL

[woody.cool]

Woody.cool, I've noticed the same issues with the Cirrus emulation with any version greater than 9. Most often, BSOD. Nothing worked short of reinstalling the emulated OS from scratch. I use QCow image format which WinImage can read (except NTFS with disabled short names). Maybe post your command line here?

Well, I'm just giving it another shot, but using Standard VGA Card. I've just this minute got Win95 installed (and just cancelled the IE4 installation that Win95C automatically tries to install with that bloody 'Windows Desktop Update')

This time around, I'm using Qemu Manager, but there is a way of getting it to show the command line it's running.

This time around, it's:

"C:\Program Files\QemuManager\qemu\qemu.exe" -L "C:\Program Files\QemuManager\qemu" -M "pc" -m 32 -cpu "qemu32" -vga std -serial vc -parallel vc -name "Windows 95" -drive file="C:\Program Files\QemuManager\images\Windows 95.qcow2",index=0,media=disk -drive file="C:\Program Files\QemuManager\media\WIN95.ISO",index=2,media=cdrom -boot c -soundhw sb16 -net none -localtime

Last time around, I had the CPU flag set to Pentium and the the VGA emulation set to the default (which is Cirrus Logic GD5446 iirc)

Initially, it's more stable, but still very slow, especially disk access.

Edited March 30, 2010 by woody.cool

[jaclaz]

Look, let's separate questions and answers.

This is a trick question:

I intend to run MS-DOS/Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 and/or Windows 98SE this way.

What may be good for 3.11 may NOT be good for Win95 or for 98SE, also, what may be good for one scope may not be for another one.

In my experience Win98 in Virtualbox is not that bad, when properly configured :

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/User_FAQ

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=9072

If you are going for 3.11, nothing can beat Qemu in usability and size of VM.

For Win95 it is debatable, and it's not so straightforward to install 95 on VPC:

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/02/15/372846.aspx

Most probably an "old" VPC 2004 would work better that VPC 2007, and an even older Connectix version still better (with the older OS).

There is again as I see it a definite advantage in using RAW disk images in any VM, the new .vhd (the fixed size, NOT the "dynamic" one) is anyway very handy, as it is simply a RAW image with a sector added to it's end, as thus it can be used/mounted/whatever by most "normal" RAW image tools.

There are so many settings (and so many drivers) that it is out of the scope of a thread like this to discuss how to setup a VM for ANY of those Operating Systems.

I guess that starting a new thread for each of them would be advisable, and however there are quite a number of threads already on the board, one out of many:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=140233

jaclaz

[dawong]

Virtual PC 2007 - Probably the best choice with 1GB; be sure to get the hotfix/rollup. You can install VPC 2004 additions on DOS and Win 95 in VPC 2007 - see this website. I do have some issues with extra floppy drives with Win 95, but it does not interfere with the rest of the emulation.

VMWare Player 3.01 (free, can create VMs, equivalent to Workstation 7.01) - I like this program a bit better than VPC 2007 if memory is not a limitation. It runs on a Pentium M laptop with 2 GB memory with Win 7 Pro host and XP guest without issues. VMWare gives USB emulation that appears to be compatible with Win 95C, but I have not tested any actual devices.

Both - DOS installation with sound is easy, as is Win 3.11 video and network, but Win 3.11 sound is apparently harder (I didn't even bother). There are several websites, including the one I mentioned above, that give drivers and installation instructions for Win 3.11 in VPC 2007 or VMWare. Random glitches happen rarely (less in these programs than in Virtualbox with 9x guest), but sometimes it is hard to differentiate a problem with the virtualization software from an OS or program issue.

Another option for Win 3.11 is DOSBox, but I have no idea what kind of network support it has.

In sounds like you won't be getting Windows 7 anytime soon; but if so, VMWare becomes the best choice because it can import XP Mode but has none of the limitations of the new version of virtual PC.

Edited April 3, 2010 by dawong

[submix8c]

For the record...

Best Virtualisation Software (more info, same software)

edit- DOH! same link as jaclaz!!!!

edit2 - ...And DOS/Win3.x, when installing the appropriate drivers, functions fine for the hardware in question (9x and up usually have them). May have to dig for them...

Edited April 3, 2010 by submix8c

[GrofLuigi]

@woody.cool:

sorry, I can't make much of the command line, I guess the Qemu Manager parameters confuse me (I never use it). For the record, here is mine:

net start kqemu
qemu.exe -L . -localtime -m 512 -hda D:\EMU\drive.img -cdrom D:\EMU\CD.iso -kernel-kqemu -soundhw es1370 -usb -usbdevice tablet

(XP)

GL

(preemptive edit): If the post comes out as the preview, there's another bug in the forum software - the closing CODE tag is before (XP).

[GrofLuigi]

Yes it did. Sorry for offtopic.

GL

[woody.cool]

Well, at the moment, I've gone to Virtual PC 2007 SP1 (with the hotfix)

Seems OK so far, but gonna keep QEMU installed on my machine in case I fall out with VPC in the near future.