Running Windows Vista 5365 under Virtual PC or Virtual Server

It's that time again (though I'm a little late to the game on this one... sorry for the delay)!  Let's get right down to it, shall we?

There are two significant changes when running this build in a Virtual Machine:

  1. You no longer need to prepare your own Virtual Disk.  Windows Vista Setup can now install itself on to a completely blank disk, so there's no more special steps that need to be done ahead of time.
  2. The Virtual Machine Additions performance enhancements from Virtual Server 2005 R2 no longer work in Windows Vista.  To get better performance, you'll need to download the Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta and use the additions that ship with that.

Some quick reminders:

  • If you're using Virtual PC, remember that VPC can't mount ISO files larger than 2.2GB.  You'll need to burn the ISO to physical media - or get some VirtualCD software and mount the ISO as a CD-ROM drive - and have Virtual PC pass it through to the guest.  Virtual Server 2005 R2 fixed this.
  • Virtual Server 2005 R2 is *free* download now.  Give it a shot!
  • Your Virtual Hard Drive should be at least 16GB.
  • You're insane if you try to run Windows Vista in a Virtual Machine with less than 512MB of RAM allocated to it.
  • Sound won't work in Windows Vista if you're running it in Virtual PC or Virtual Server.

Good luck!