Virtual MCE Under Windoze

[wierdbeard65]

Hi,

I've seen this discussed a bit a few times and I've explored the wiki, which doesn't really say much that has helped...

I would like to set up a virtual environment (at least a core and an MD) on my Windows XP laptop. I'm leaning towards VMWare unless anyone knows of a better solution.

Has anyone managed this with 810? If so, can you provide "monkey-see, monkey-do" instructions? How sinsitive would such a setup be to hardware? How do you configure the virtual networks for the correct DHCP (external) no DHCP (internal)? (This last one has me scratching my head as as far as I can see, DHCP is either on or off, across ALL networks!)

I want to be able to explore MCE while I'm on the plane / train and then (perhaps) start getting my feet wet with some dev work. Even if it's just designer stuff of maybe documentation with screen shots and stuff.

Anyway, anyone who has this working, please let me know.

If it matters, it's a Toshiba laptop that has a sticker on it saying "Graphics by nVidai" I can post full spec if it makes a difference.....

[gollywog]

Hi WB,

Hardware isn't going to matter as such. Your guest OS will be presented with "virtual" hardware supplied by your virtualisation software. This means that the only tuner card that you may be able to use will be a USB one. Do note that you won't have any sort of decent graphics as the gfx card as presented virtually is very basic. As for your DHCP question. You can just create 2 virtual networks. One internal that is a "virtual" only network and the external one that can connect to what ever network your laptop is on. This is all done within the virtual mchine config.

I am currently running VMware. It's nice and simple and quite slick. I have also used VirtualBox. Both do the same job. Both are free to use. The thing I like most about vmware is there is a hypervisor only version. This means u can get a bare bones machine, install the hypervisor on it and run Virtual machines without any OS overheads like windows. This maybe useful down the track for your dev environment. Basically it would allow you to start tinkering on your laptop and then move to bigger better faster hardware if needed. VirtualBox can do this also but needs a OS installed to run.

VMware Server is the windws/linux server app.
VMware ESXi is the hypervisor OS
WMware player will allow you to run virtual machines but not create them.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Gollywog

[merkur2k]

the problem with vmware is that the free version is complete crap. vmware server has an unusable ui, so unresposive you cant even get to a bios screen in the vm.
the problem with virtualbox is that it is buggy as hell and has horrible disk i/o performance.
so take your pick

[wierdbeard65]

Thanks for the replies, guys!

I think I'll go with VMWare for the time being. I may even consider ESXi and then virtualize XP for work, but I'd prefer not to muck around with my laptop that much! My main reason for this choice is that we use it a bit at work and I have (slightly) more experience with it!

Hardware isn't going to matter as such. Your guest OS will be presented with "virtual" hardware supplied by your virtualisation software. This means that the only tuner card that you may be able to use will be a USB one. Do note that you won't have any sort of decent graphics as the gfx card as presented virtually is very basic.

From my point of view, this is good. I am not too worried about tuners in this case (they won't work anyway on a plane!).

As for your DHCP question. You can just create 2 virtual networks. One internal that is a "virtual" only network and the external one that can connect to what ever network your laptop is on.

Humm, that's what I thought, but when you install VMWare (server) it creates a few virtual networks. What I've found (unless I'm going about this the wrong way) is that the DHCP setting seems to be "all on" or "all off", not "On on network A and off on network B" Can you advise?

I am currently running VMware. It's nice and simple and quite slick.

Given that it's virtual hardware, would it be possible to zip up your working MCE system and send it to me? This would be as a last resort if I really can't get it to install myself!

vmware server has an unusable ui, so unresposive you cant even get to a bios screen in the vm.

You are correct that when you start a VM, by the time the console opens the BIOS  POST has finished, but you can still get in to the BIOS. I can't remember the sequence off the top of my head and will check as soon as I'm in the office - just in case anyone else has the problem!