virtual pc for testing

[rfwoodwork]

I am new to slipstreaming winxp. My question is what virtual software would you reccomend I use for testing? I have no experience with virtual software.

[redxii]

I personally use VirtualBox http://www.virtualbox.org (Free)

And I'll say again my reasons, VPC takes an hour and a half to install XP, whereas on VirtualBox it will go from start to finish in about 15 minutes. I have an XP 3200+ Barton and 2 GB of memory, so not exactly top of the line.

[crashfly]

I use MS Virtual PC 2007 because it is free. It does not take an hour an a half for myself, more like about 30 minutes for me. I have an AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400+.

I suppose your other option would be VMware, but it is not free (that I know of). It does have the benefit of being able to mount the files being used as hdds, so you can directly modify files on it, but that is about the only benefit I see at this time.

[5eraph]

I haven't tried VirtualBox. I used Virtual PC until I needed to run XP x64 as a guest OS, which it does not support.

I'm using VMware Server, which is free, because it supports x64 guests. I can install Windows (32 or 64 bit) in less than 12 minutes from ISO, start to finish. That's running on a dual core AMD Opteron 185 (2.6 GHz).

[rfwoodwork]

When I was reading your posts, I just thought, how do you test the cd, do you open the virtual program and then put in the cd, and run the cd and then just watch to see if everything goes ok? Is there any documentation I can download, on how to test the slipstreamed cd? I was just wondering, do have to test from the cd, so if that is the case then I was thinking you should use a cd-rw, right?

[5eraph]

CD-RWs and DVD-RWs will save you a lot of money. You can also test the ISO directly and skip even that. Testing will be faster from ISO as well.

Testing involves doing everything you'd normally do with a real install. Just make sure that everything works, nothing is broken, etc.

[crashfly]

When I was reading your posts, I just thought, how do you test the cd, do you open the virtual program and then put in the cd, and run the cd and then just watch to see if everything goes ok? Is there any documentation I can download, on how to test the slipstreamed cd? I was just wondering, do have to test from the cd, so if that is the case then I was thinking you should use a cd-rw, right?

If you skip "burning" the image until you have tested it, you save a bit of time. Then once you are sure the image works, you can "rule out" the install as the problem. (Usually the last problem left is the media.) Virtual PC offers a 'mounting an ISO' option as I am sure the other two do also.

Best and easiest way to do the slipstreaming/testing is to setup a couple of directories aside on your hdd. Once will be your basic no frills setup (with the latest SP slipstreamed in already). Once you have that, you copy it to the second "working" directory. There you do the standard addons and update packs. Once you burn an ISO and test it, you can delete the contents of the "working" directory and copy your base setup directory again and start over. It really will save time if you have a situation similar to what I just described.

[rfwoodwork]

thanks again. this my be an old question but can you put in the key code into windows files and how do you go about doing that? Please bare with me, but if you get tired of all my question I would totally understand. Thanks again, your posts have really helped me more then any one else has.

[Kelsenellenelvian]

http://unattended.msfn.org/unattended.xp/view/web/7/

[pen25jf]

If this was answered somewhere, sorry in advanced. I installed Microsoft's 2007 VM, and all I see (when running) is a black box (like a CMD DOS box) and a flickering text thingy, waiting for me to type.... what the hell do I do?!

Do I need to have my BIOS set up to have Virtual Hard drive enabled, or am I just dumb (yes, it could be the latter!).