Vista Ultimate and Virtual PC

I have upgraded my laptop to Vista Ultimate a few days ago, and I was wondering about the "Virtual Machine" software that Vista had included. From the feature set, I was led to believe that Microsoft included Virtual PC on this. However, if this is the case, I'm wondering how to access this extra feature. I'm hoping that I could install Fedora Core on as the virtual OS on that. Anyone know if I have to download Virtual PC separately, or if it really IS included on here?

Have nowhere seen any claim that it is part. VPC has been a seperate product for years (which was and still is sold)

The only version I could think of beeing part of it would be Ultimate and in that case it would be part of the Ultimate Extras through which you would have to download it.

Being sold you say, have you tried, Virtual PC can be downloaded for free according to Microsoft themselves?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

Also, I can see that there's a Beta version of VPC 2007, when was the full-blown package supposed to be released? Any words from Microsoft on this one?

Also, in the meantime, I dunno if it says, but was VPC 2004 compatible with Vista at all?

Yeh VPC has been free for all since last year. VPC'04 runs Vista fine, but Aero Glass is a no go. I think the point of '07 is to get basic 3D support, enough for Glass - but still all software driven, last I heard MS claim 3D accelerated support is impossible, even though VMWare Workstation 5.5 has just that.

I run VPC 07 beta and no support for 3D there. It only includes "official" support for Vista and Vista sound (Vista has no more support for ISA and VPC04 sound is emulated through ISA card).

3D is not supported in any VPC. They emulate intel onboard.

But thats normal, the 3D support on most cards is bound to 1 driver and thats the driver that renders your desktop ... the virtual driver can't use it. (don't know if multi DVI cards which allow multiple hardware accelerated desktops theoretically would be capable to support it, as I don't have one ... but VPC did not support it in the last regular version. Don't know if the 07 beta does)
In the end there is no reason to have 3D support, if you want true performance, emulation isn't the way to go anyway, wait for Virtualisation Software and get a Core 2 Duo.

VMWare has that support, thats true. But at a high price as your main desktop will lose its performance, as the "3d in 3D" thing they do will suck the power out of your GPU while the emulation is running.
Its nice they have but stupid as it is pointless as windows won't give multi software exclusive access which would be needed to make it performant enough. (this might be possible on Vista thought as the desktop itself is 3d accelerated. so with Vista only versions of emulators you might expect better results on that end)

I work for a tech support company and we build/repair computers. When I asked our microsoft rep what this Virtual Machine thing was that installed itself he said it was part of their legacy support features and is what allows people to run older applications and hardware in vista. Hope that helps

Yep, I tried running Ubuntu, then Fedora Core. It seems that even tho they installed fine, Virtual PC 2007 Beta didn't seem to allow Linux to run in the GUI mode. Seems like that's trouble right there. I mean, I have an ATI Mobility card, and I was hoping that Microsoft would've let the graphics card and all the hardware be recognized in Linux. Seems like I was dead wrong about that.

Yes, you were. VPC is only written for use with MS OSs.

Isn't VMWare free too these days? It allows you to run linux...

Yeah, I tried VMWare on here, but Vista didn't seem to allow it to go through. I mean, it downloaded, and began to install, but then again, I'm still hoping that VMWare will design something FOR Vista, as opposed to what they have already. Plus, I hear that VMWare was definitely recommended NOT to be used on Vista, Ultimate or not. I have a 160 GB laptop drive anyway, so it's still somewhat easy to dual-boot, and leave about, well, let's see 149 GB formatted, so I'd say about 74 - 75 GB apiece per operating system. Should sound about right.

Aspects of VMWare are free, but I think if you want to CREATE a guest OS, you'll need a paid for version. There may have been some loophole around that, I'm not sure. Using a precreated guest is definately free... You can also create Win2000/XP guests on VPC and convert them to VMWare.

Yeah, may try VMWare to see if there's a version that will actually install and work on Vista. I tried a physical partition/dual-boot, and GRUB didn't even recognize Vista was even installed, it just went right into Kubuntu, which scared the wazoo outta me. I mean, hey, gimme a choice here! Seems like GRUB doesn't seem to be updated enough on these distros to recognize Vista on here. That's dumb, now I had to reinstall Vista all over again, and build it up from scratch, which wasn't all that pleasant. Yeesh, I better hope that Ubuntu/Kubuntu will update with their next version of Linux to allow for Vista dual-boots. It seems like I can't dual-boot the old fashioned way like I did with Win XP at all. Seems like virtualization is the only way to go for right now.

That's odd, I was using GRUB to triboot with Vista, Linux and Mac OSX at one stage =] It definately works - I can't remember anything specific about the boot config though, so do some research, you'll get it working.

This is assuming you installed Vista on a seperate partition (preferably the first one with a NTFS/FAT file system) and didn't mess with any of it's boot loader files.

I'm running fedora on an XP home machine via VMWare - it was mission impossible via Virtual PeeCee - Seems Vista has some in built functionality to stop VMWare from functioning as it did within XPHome - I suppose there'll be an installable downloadable patch to remedy VMWare running linux on xp machines - or is that just being cynical ?