Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 - with Vista

[Pi rules]

I'm using Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 (thanks, photolady :)) and one of my virtual machines is using Vista. I've noticed that everything is a bit slower on it than normal, but Vista has been unbearably slow. I opened Vista's task manager and noticed that it only detects one core (I have a 3.0 GHz. Pentium D) and that core is always at 100%, even though I looked at the processes and they all seem to be "normal" with just a few % of the CPU being used at one time. I'm not sure if this is a Vista problem or a Virtual PC problem, but I'm guessing it's the latter. Task Manager in the host OS (XP Home) shows around 50-58% usage. I allocated 700 MB of RAM to it, which isn't much but I confirmed that it isn't using nearly all of it.

In Options, I have it to run Virtual PC at maximum speed. Can this speed be increased at all, or should I just stick with using an actual installation of Vista?

[Dan18960]

PI,

You are REALLY under powered for what you are looking to do. I noticed that you only have 1gb of RAM total on the system. I used 2 gb of RAM on my test system and at that it was DDR 2 667mhz and Vista was as quick as XP (well almost - it does have a LOT of overhead with the security it wants to manage all the time).

You have to remember you are NOT only running Vista, but also Virtual and your "base" operating system.

I would look at boosting your RAM to the max your motherboard can accomodate - I think you only have 4gb max. I got a 955x motherboard because it would max to 8gb RAM just because I know that when Vista becomes a released operating system with it's first sp (I won't be waiting outside CompUSA at midnight EVER) it will HIGHLY recommend 1gb of RAM and suggest 2gb - which means you will have to double that for applications (like Office 2007 - which I just got the beta version of).

[Pi rules]

I'm thinking about a RAM upgrade (probably just to 2 GB), but I increased the allocated RAM with no effect. The max. is 4 GB, but I'd rather not buy that much, I'm saving money for college. For a while, I ran Vista on a PC with 512 MB RAM and I looked at Vista's task manager (in the virtual Vista installation) and I had over 300 MB free.

The CPU usage was the (main) problem, but the processes didn't add up to 100% even though that's what the CPU usage was. And I think I can only use 1 core.

[Dan18960]

Are you looking at the processes in Vista or ALL of the processes - remember Vista is only going to relate it's processes as also XP and I don't know if VPC will even allow a process monitoring.

VPC is more a server function than a workstation concept anyway. It is used to allow workstations to connect to a session (more robust than terminal services or citrix) and run a program via drive mapping / url assignments. It gives you in that senario access to your computer AND the vpc environment.

That is why it is so memory intensive. One of my previous employees working in a realtor office has setup vpc so that agents can run proprietary applications and he only has to update the server, not everyone's computer when monthly releases are distributed.

[Pi rules]

I know that XP shows a little over 50% - what it shows during a task that is CPU-intensive and takes a full single-core. Vista shows 100%, but only one core. Most of the CPU usage in XP (host) is from the vpc executable, so I assumed that most of it's CPU usage would be used by the guest OS, but I guess I was wrong, thanks. :) The only thing is that now I'm running Xandros and my CPU usage (host OS) is only 4-6%, so shouldn't the Vista processes at least add to the 90s?

I was looking at VPC to make tutorials and other things for installation. Otherwise, the screenshots look fuzzy and I'd have to use a digital camera, which is hard to get a decent picture on my CRT. It also would have been nice to avoid the nearly 10 partitions I used to have for Linux, Windows, swap, file exchange, backup, etc.

Edit: I just read Wikipedia's article here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_PC):
Virtual PC emulates a Pentium II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_II) with MMX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMX) processor (virtualizes the host processor on Windows versions) with an Intel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel) 440BX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_440BX) chipset, a standard SVGA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVGA) Vesa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesa) graphics card (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_card) (S3 Trio 64 PCI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Component_Interconnect) with 4 MByte Video RAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_RAM), adjustable in later versions), a system BIOS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS) from American Megatrends (AMI), a Creative Labs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Labs) Soundblaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundblaster) 16 PnP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_and_Play), and a DEC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation) 21041 (DEC 21140 (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DEC_21140&action=edit) in newer versions) Ethernet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet) network (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_network) card.
That is probably why the CPU usage is so high. Vista on a Pentium II. :dizzy:

[Pi rules]

On a comparison of Virtual Machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_virtual_machines), I saw that VPC 2004 was "near native" speed "with additions". Any idea of where those "additions" are?

Edit: I found it: Open the OS in VPC, then go to the Action Menu and choose the Action Menu | Install or Update Virtual PC Additions. I'm not sure how it works in Linux, though; I had to use CrossOver Office.

[Pi rules]

I installed the "additions", but the installation didn't finish everything (must not be compatible with Vista. I installed VMware Player then SUSE and Vista on it (Vista's installer had 4-bit color) and was a bit faster until I installed the VMware tools manually and now it works well. Not as well as if it were the only OS, but at an acceptable speed. :)

Thanks.