Use a virtual machine -- it's free!

I'm trying to play bluray discs through the powerdvd program I got with my drive.

Basically I don't want to pay for the PowerDVD 9 Ultra just yet (needed for windows 7), I was hoping to run the powerdvd 7 w/bluray in a virtual machine running xp or vista. I have found that vista recognises the BD-ROM and XP doesn't, so probably vista.

Is there any way to use the full features of my graphics card? Instead of it virtualizing it's own graphics chip.

I'm currently using Vmware Player.

Many thanks!
 
this is funny to me only because where is the annonymity.. there is non with this vmware..i say this only because of the registration process this site made me go through.. kinda ridiculous..and probing
 
I've used virtual PC before, its good but its counterpart is much better so I decided to switch to VMWare.
 
I downloaded one of these "Virtual Machines" a while ago. It's still sat on my XP desktop because i'm too scared to open it in case it screws my rig up! hee hee. :D
 
Virtualization has been out for years and we are talking about it like it's new. There is no way that virtualization is practical for the home user. Stay off of the porn sites, run a good antivirus, and only download from a trusted source....problem solved. those 3 steps are much less cumbersome than configuring a virtual machine just to be negligent on the computer.
 
BruceTheTech said:
Stay off the porn...

I think thats why virtual machines actually exist ya know....because for most "Bucks", staying away from the "Gentleman's entertainment" is practically impossible. :D
 
Stay off of the porn sites

I am a woman and I can't understand the allure of porn, but unfortunately, I am asked to fix other people's computer problems and some of the men seem to like porn. I want to be able to tell them what they shouldn't be doing on the internet so that I won't have to fix any more problems. I would tell them not to visit porn sites, but I think that would do no good.

How is it these sites infect computers? Obviously somehow a file gets downloaded, but how - is the user clicking on something they shouldn't?

I never get malware on my computer but I never use Facebook, AOL or visit porn sites, either.
 
Beauty said:
How is it these sites infect computers? Obviously somehow a file gets downloaded, but how - is the user clicking on something they shouldn't?

Because porn site get alot of traffic from "needy" people, so planting malware and other stuff there is a perfect place. Ive seen malware on a mate's computer in the past, that he got from watching porn videos. Just "click" and then media player opens, and then BAM, infected.

But people don't have to download anything obviously for nastys to get inside a computer, some come down automaticly (through cookies mainly).
 
Ok, so then maybe I should configure the browser to require a prompt before any cookies are downloaded.

Yeah, you can do that, and put some desent anti-spyware on, that's what keeps me fresh from the cookie monsters. :)

But back to the topic, i suppose if you were into using virtual machines, it wouldn't really matter if you got infected because you can just start all over again. Like i said before though, i haven't got into them personally yet.
 
I use them all the time Benny26.

Once you adapt to using the VM you can find countless ideas for them. Like for example, I have loads of older automotive diagnostic software that will only run with XP in 32bit, and its a nightmare to configure with W7, so I run a XP Pro 32bit VM for them, and I've always got them to hand then. :)

I test Linux distro's with it, I use one VM as a testbed for my PC Linux OS, to verify changes before commiting them to the PC's physical install. I have pretty much every OS type running in separate VMs now, including the other famous "cat" OS that I shall not mention here. :haha:

I also use 2 VMs for guides, one a default install of Ubuntu, the other a dual boot with Ubuntu and XP Pro. I even have separate VM's for Windows Server 2003, and one for Windows Server 2008.

I love my Virtualbox. :haha:
 
Yeah, they do sound fun i suppose (and practical)...I'm just like a little kid on the big diving board when it's comes to VM, i want to try them, but i'm a little bit nervy for some reason.

Maybe i'll drag an old drive out after crimbo and finally "test the water".

PS: Benny26 is way too formal...You can call me just Benny ya'know :D
 
But back to the topic, i suppose if you were into using virtual machines, it wouldn't really matter if you got infected because you can just start all over again. Like i said before though, i haven't got into them personally yet.

Just to add some information, from a few virtualization software targetting individual (not for enterprise environment) only VMWare Workstation (commercial) and VirtualBox (free - actually mixed license) that support this. If you are a user of VMWare Player (free) you have to have a clean copy of the whole machine stored somewhere to be able to revert to "clean" state.

I don't know with VirtualPC, since I never use it more than download the installer :)
 
VM is awesome. Once I discovered this I set up three machines. WinXP, Win7 and Ubuntu. I have three monitors and maximized each on separate screens and showed my friends. They were so confused that I did not have three PCs under my desk! LOL
 
Virtualization has been out for years and we are talking about it like it's new. There is no way that virtualization is practical for the home user. Stay off of the porn sites, run a good antivirus, and only download from a trusted source....problem solved. those 3 steps are much less cumbersome than configuring a virtual machine just to be negligent on the computer.

Reading a few older posts I stopped at this one.

Why is this not practical for home user? I think it's most practical actually. These days you can get viruses, spyware, malware from sites like facebook.com and myspace.com. Users dont have to click on anything to get infected, like other's stated.

I think it's much more difficult to trust a website than to install a program such as VMware or Virtual Machine and a VM OS.
 
While your reply is not directed at me, I totally agree with you Trillionsin.

It takes the time required to install an OS, plus 5 mins to actually create a VM environment you can use. If you emulate a disc image on the computer, and install some OS' like Linux you can have it up and running in as little as 10-15 mins.

A secured OS you only do banking in, in the case of someone who relies on banking and stock purchases is an excellent example of a virtual OS in use. Using older incompatible software in a XP Virtual guest is yet another ideal solution.

You can come up with an almost infinite number of ideas, solutions and practical uses for a Virtual OS, about as limited in quantity as the intended usage possibilities with a real OS.
 
While your reply is not directed at me, I totally agree with you Trillionsin.

It takes the time required to install an OS, plus 5 mins to actually create a VM environment you can use. If you emulate a disc image on the computer, and install some OS' like Linux you can have it up and running in as little as 10-15 mins.

A secured OS you only do banking in, in the case of someone who relies on banking and stock purchases is an excellent example of a virtual OS in use. Using older incompatible software in a XP Virtual guest is yet another ideal solution.

You can come up with an almost infinite number of ideas, solutions and practical uses for a Virtual OS, about as limited in quantity as the intended usage possibilities with a real OS.

I agree. I usually run a 64 bit system. I think the last reason, silly as it may be, that I created a VM was to play an old game called Chips Challenge, this came with a version of windows that I cannot remember... but I found the download and it will only run on 32 bit systems. So I just quickly installed WinXP to play this silly game, and that was the only reason I used it.

At where I work, we run most of our servers in a VM environment, and we use VMware Vsphere Client. This is some pretty cool VM stuff going on here. Some servers required a USB key to be plugged in at all times, and well... these computers do not have a "physical box" to plug it into. So we found a device that connects via Ethernet, and emulates the USB in the VM through a software interface on the server, and it works like a champ.

Only reason why I bring that up is because we were talking about how we never had any problems with it. Its a Belkin device, if anyone is interested I can look up the model. Just send me a PM.

No point to my post, just talking about how VMs are nice, features, and how to get around the lack of a physical box when you need to plug a USB device into it at all times.
 
I run VMs of several OSes using VirtualBox. Windows 7 64-bit is easily supported as well as many, many others.
 
I installed XP in VMWare Player (Free) largely to continue using some excellent older programs which won't run on my Windows 7 computer. The XP OS came from a now scrapped computer which had a retail version of XP Home. Note that you can't use a cheaper OEM copy of Windows. It's worked out really well. The only glitch was that my paid for security software slowed things down. After installing Windows Security Essentials instead all is running well. I've added Ubuntu Linux 12.04 to see what Linux has to offer and have been impressed. Ubuntu Linux doesn't run as fast as my virtual XP and isn't up to playing video files full screen. Nevertheless it's interesting to experiment within a safe environment. Ubuntu Linux has lots of free software available developed by enthusiasts. If VMPlayer goes pear shaped it should have no effect on the host OS.
 
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