XP Virtual Machine in Win 7 - strange happenings

[Andy Champ]

BillW50 wrote:
>
> What kind of computers are you running Windows 7 on? I ran Windows 7
> Ultimate RC on three different computers. One on a Gateway MX6124, a
> Gateway M465e, and an Asus 702 netbook. All three uses Celeron CPUs with
> 2GB of installed RAM. All three has Intel graphics (915 and 945). And
> only this machine here could run Aero.
>
<snip>

You don't need Aero.

I put Win7 on my old laptop (1gig ram, Pentium M 1.8GHz) and find it
better than XP. Primarily because I don't have to reboot it every time I
want to use the wireless. It's got some nice picture handling stuff too.

Vista, OTOH, sucks.

Andy

 

[BillW50]

In news:HoadnSDCFJoXWorRnZ2dnUVZ7vmdnZ2d@eclipse.net.uk,
Andy Champ typed on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 193:46 +0100:
> BillW50 wrote:
>>
>> What kind of computers are you running Windows 7 on? I ran Windows 7
>> Ultimate RC on three different computers. One on a Gateway MX6124, a
>> Gateway M465e, and an Asus 702 netbook. All three uses Celeron CPUs
>> with 2GB of installed RAM. All three has Intel graphics (915 and
>> 945). And only this machine here could run Aero.
>>
> <snip>
>
> You don't need Aero.
>
> I put Win7 on my old laptop (1gig ram, Pentium M 1.8GHz) and find it
> better than XP. Primarily because I don't have to reboot it every
> time I want to use the wireless. It's got some nice picture handling
> stuff too.
> Vista, OTOH, sucks.
>
> Andy

Yes bad drivers can make or break an OS. But you don't need to change
the OS to fix that problem. And I am not sure I follow you about the
nice picture handling features. As it didn't seem very special to me.
And all of that security under Windows 7 drives me nuts.

As Windows 7 doesn't want you to have control over itself. But it rather
control the user instead. And Windows 7 does stupid things like grabbing
My Documents off of my flash drive and merging it with My Documents on
the hard drive. Makes it very confusing. Worse, it also renames folders
too on it's own. Like it grabbed My Favorites on my XP partition and
renamed it to just Favorites. Unbelievable!

It is like Windows 7 was designed to use by idiots. You make something
so idiot proof, only an idiot would want to use it. That is were it is
heading Andy. Maybe you like that idea, but I sure don't.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Windows XP SP3

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

Mike Barnes wrote:
> geoff <troll@uk-diy.org>:
>> In message <hv69p7$b0e$1@news.eternal-september.org>, BillW50
>> <BillW50@aol.kom> writes
>>> In news:eN5ntnVr7oFMFwAy@demon.co.uk,
>>> geoff typed on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:19:55 +0100:
>>>>> I do regret buying two copies of Windows 7 that still sit up on the
>>>>> shelf unopened. As I was running two copies of Windows 7 Ultimate RC
>>>>> for about a year and I was unimpressed with it.
>>>> Better send one to me then
>>> Really? You like Windows 7? After using it for about a year, I saw it
>>> only capable of running 95% of what I want to do vs. Windows XP which
>>> runs 100% of what I want. And Windows 7 eats up lots of CPU time just
>>> while you are doing nothing. Windows XP when you are doing nothing, the
>>> CPU is actually at or near idle. And running something that is very CPU
>>> intensive like games, always runs slower under Windows 7 than it does
>>> under Windows XP. So I don't see Windows 7 as any big deal and I can see
>>> why some want to downgrade their Vista and Windows 7 machines. And I
>>> don't blame them one bit.
>>>
>> Wouldn't touch for my work machines, but, using VM , having bought a
>> new webcam, etc, it sort of works well enough
>>
>> even turnpike is almost OK
>>
>> but I agree
>>
>> XP is rockandroll
>
> Interesting.
>
> I just made a spare partition and put Windows 7 onto it, so I can now
> boot XP or 7. As time permits I'm intending to configure the Win7
> partition and install my (numerous) apps on it, with the eventual aim of
> moving to Win7 full time.
>
> After a day or so at it I find that I'm looking at Win7's new features,
> finding them useless or worse, and expending almost all of my effort on
> making Win7 work like XP does.
>
> And I'm wondering why I'm bothering.
>
> The way I'm thinking now, I'll not waste any more time on Windows 7
> until I buy a new PC, when I'd be doing all that configuring and
> installing anyway.
>
I did the same trying to make XP work like 98..

Then I went Linux

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

BillW50 wrote:
> In news:hv7e7p$bmp$3@news.datemas.de,
> dennis@home typed on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 097:56 +0100:
>> "BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in message
>> news:hv69p7$b0e$1@news.eternal-september.org...
>>> In news:eN5ntnVr7oFMFwAy@demon.co.uk,
>>> geoff typed on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:19:55 +0100:
>>>>> I do regret buying two copies of Windows 7 that still sit up on the
>>>>> shelf unopened. As I was running two copies of Windows 7 Ultimate
>>>>> RC for about a year and I was unimpressed with it.
>>>> Better send one to me then
>>> Really? You like Windows 7? After using it for about a year, I saw
>>> it only capable of running 95% of what I want to do vs. Windows XP
>>> which runs 100% of what I want. And Windows 7 eats up lots of CPU
>>> time just while you are doing nothing. Windows XP when you are doing
>>> nothing, the CPU is actually at or near idle. And running something
>>> that is very CPU intensive like games, always runs slower under
>>> Windows 7 than it does under Windows XP. So I don't see Windows 7 as
>>> any big deal and I can see why some want to downgrade their Vista
>>> and Windows 7 machines. And I don't blame them one bit.
>> Are you sure you actually have looked at windows 7?
>> None of what you say is true for me or anyone else I know with
>> windows 7. You can send me the other win7 if you don't want it.
>
> What kind of computers are you running Windows 7 on? I ran Windows 7
> Ultimate RC on three different computers. One on a Gateway MX6124, a
> Gateway M465e, and an Asus 702 netbook. All three uses Celeron CPUs with
> 2GB of installed RAM. All three has Intel graphics (915 and 945). And
> only this machine here could run Aero.
>
> And it was always the same. Much higher CPU usage and much higher
> average core temperatures (up by 20°F) than it was when compared to XP
> on the same machines. If you didn't monitor the CPU usage and/or the
> core temperatures. I can see how somebody wouldn't even know that
> Windows 7 is working very hard in the background.
>
> As Windows 7 is very clever in appearances. But that is all it is, just
> an illusion. Even the minimum specs for high powered PC games are higher
> for Vista and Windows 7 than they are for Windows XP. That should tell
> you something wrong right there. As why would you need a faster
> processor and massive more memory for the same game if Windows 7 really
> didn't slow things down?
>
> And as for the two unopened Windows 7 copies, right now they are holding
> my books up straight on the shelf. And I am thinking the DVDs might also
> make some pretty nifty drink coasters too.
>

hah! its all in the pretty graphics mate.

I can get almost 100% utilisation here (Linux) by moving a window round
the screen very fast..

Older Macs simply couldn't keep up with flash videos..

I would say that in most cases 97% of all CPU power goes into eye candy.

The only other things that really stress my machine are manipulation and
doing operations on seriously large and complex graphic objects.

 

[Andy Champ]

BillW50 wrote:
>
> Yes bad drivers can make or break an OS. But you don't need to change
> the OS to fix that problem. And I am not sure I follow you about the
> nice picture handling features. As it didn't seem very special to me.
> And all of that security under Windows 7 drives me nuts.
>
I agree I shouldn't have needed to change the OS - but I wanted to try
it anyway! Security doesn't seem to hit meon Win7, it did on Vista
until I turned it all off.

> As Windows 7 doesn't want you to have control over itself. But it rather
> control the user instead. And Windows 7 does stupid things like grabbing
> My Documents off of my flash drive and merging it with My Documents on
> the hard drive. Makes it very confusing. Worse, it also renames folders
> too on it's own. Like it grabbed My Favorites on my XP partition and
> renamed it to just Favorites. Unbelievable!

Haven't met anything like this either. But then I did a clean install.
When I put my camera's memory in it asks me what to do.
>
> It is like Windows 7 was designed to use by idiots. You make something
> so idiot proof, only an idiot would want to use it. That is were it is
> heading Andy. Maybe you like that idea, but I sure don't.
>

Ah, now _that_ was Win ME!

Andy

 

[C.Joseph Drayton]

On 6/14/2010 3:13 AM, Roger Mills wrote:
> I have an XP Virtual Machine running under Windows 7 Professional
> "Windows Virtual PC" so that I can run some 'legacy' applications which
> won't work in Win 7.
>
> In the virtual machine, Windows Explorer shows a local disk (C and
> also all the disks on the host machine - and allows me to copy files
> back and forth.
>
> Most of the applications running in the virtual machine are quite happy
> to read and write data files on the host machine.
>
> However Word 2000[1] (and Excel 2000) are not. If I try to open a file
> from the host machine in Word, it just hangs - and CPU usage goes to
> 100% On the other hand, if I copy a file from the host machine to the
> local disk, it then opens quite happily in Word.
>
> It's presumably got something to do with sharing and file privileges
> etc., but why should Word (and other Office 2000 applications) behave
> differently from (say) Quicken in this respect? Any ideas?
>
>
> [1] In case you're wondering why I'm running Word in a virtual machine,
> I need to use a particular pseudo printer driver (Jaws - for creating
> PDF files) which won't work in Win7, and I need to open Word files in
> order to 'print' them. (Yes, there are other PDF converters which *will*
> run in Win7 - but I haven't yet found one with the same security options
> as Jaws).

Hello Roger,

You might consider using a different VM manager. I am using portable
VirtualBox (Oracle's second maintenance release) and I have had no
problem with it under WindowsXP, Vista, or Windows7, Server 2003.

I like using VMs for testing. I also have one 16GB (fixed size) VDI that
I have installed Acrobat, and a few other commercial pieces of software
that I don't use often enough to have take up space on my production
computer.

With portable VirtualBox, I can run those applications literally on any
WindowsXP or newer Windows OS without having to do a real install of the
app. Since most commercial software doesn't want you running multiple
copies of it, I am not (as far as I know) in violation of the software's
EULA since I only have them installed on the VM. I do of course keep
backups of the VDI and do not loan/give the VDI to anyone.

Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services

Web site: http://csdcs.site90.net/
E-mail: c.joseph@csdcs.site90.net