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-Microsoft
-5.3
- www.microsoft.com
-Freeware
- 34 841 people
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Review

Virtual PC 2004, is a Microsoft virtualization suite that allows us to emulate other Operating system. Very effective and efficient if is necessary to have more than one operating system running. You can have Windows 95 or Linux running on your Microsoft XP at the same time without going through the arduous process of making parallel installations or without going through the configuration of a dual boot or even creating a dual boot installation in a virtual machine without affect your base operating system, however other operating systems like Linux may run, but are not officially supported.

It’s virtualizes the operating system using the resources of the computer, creating a hardware list to proceed with the installation. The program can create files that are used as virtual hard drive. It provides multiple configurations and options like the type of operating system that we want to install, components enabling or disabling options, manage the capacity of the virtual hard drive, memory that we want to use, etc.

It is an excellent virtualization suite but it is limited due the physical components, as an example in the case that you only have 1 GB memory ram it can be configure to use 64 MB to 1 GB but this would affect the performance of the host console. If you want to use this virtualization suite my recommendation is to have the proper hardware to support the suite, not the minimum recommended, the necessary for the maximum performance.

Right now Microsoft has Virtual PC 2007 as the last version available but we can mention other virtualization suites like:
* VMware, it has some free versions.
* KVM.
* VirtualBox.
* Xen.
* Bochs.
* QEMU.
* Virtuozzo.
* Mac on Linux.
* Basilisk II.
* SheepShaver.
Advantages
  • User friendly console.
  • System files can be used in other consoles and systems.
  • Virtual Machine wizard , very easy to configure.
  • Freeware.
Disadvantages
  • Performance depends on the hardware and the configuration that we choose.
  • Processor not virtualized in Windows operating system just in Mac.
  • We couldn’t configure the components to use an specific one as VMware.

Reviewed by: Jose Ruiloba

Reviewer rating: Editor's rating 5

Screenshots

Wizard options Wizard options Virtual Machine Wizard Virtual Machine Wizard Operating systems selection Operating systems selection Memory Ram Configuration Memory Ram Configuration
All 9 screenshots

Latest comments

Pruduch(beginner) 10 months ago 
use ms virtual pc version 6.0.192 or higher in case you want to install Windows 7 beta.
if you use an older build you'll get a BSOD after installing vmadditions !!
(at least that BSOD shows how the recovery function works in Windows 7)
Bethrezen(fan) 7 months ago 
Yeah, nice way to try it out lol
poo(beginner) Last year 
Great usefull utility but could do with better graphics card emulation.
Add new comment All 3 comments
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