Looking for a free virtual pc software.

leishi85leishi85 Grand Rapids, MI Icrontian
edited August 2004 in Science & Tech
looking for a free virtual pc software to test this ISO image made with windows xp and SP2, and unattended install.

any???

Comments

  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    Virtual PC software good and free, no. md5summer (which is md5sum for windows), yes. make and image of your ISO file on HD, then md5sum the CD, compare. Or, in Linux burning with K3B tell it verify the data and it will on-the-fly do it for you, with md5sum.

    You want to test the unattended install, so another HD is best way to do this, keep original HD for backup, hook up a spare in its place to test the CD install. MUCH cheaper than VMWare.

    NEXT best is the md5sum check to verify integrity of the CD burn, that is how Linux ISOs are burn verified and download verified these days. AFIAK, Knoppix 3.4 and 3.5 can burn CDs and RUN from CD, get the Knoppix live CD and it sure as heck can do two md5sums, one on your ISO file you used to run, one on the burned CD.
  • leishi85leishi85 Grand Rapids, MI Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    i'm not trying to see if the ISO file is made correctly, i'm trying to see if i didn't the unattended install thing correctly. i Remember maybe a year ago, i used this softwae to test a linux distro on my windows machine, It created a virtual PC, and loaded the ISO file to install Linux. I forgot the name of that piece of software.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    leishi85 wrote:
    i'm not trying to see if the ISO file is made correctly, i'm trying to see if i didn't the unattended install thing correctly. i Remember maybe a year ago, i used this softwae to test a linux distro on my windows machine, It created a virtual PC, and loaded the ISO file to install Linux. I forgot the name of that piece of software.

    I think I see where you are going with your idea, but that is normally RAM virtualized and you want to test an install to HD. With no other target other than your loaded HD for install, all you can do is to try to load it into RAM. Does your box have enough RAM for a whole XP install??? Most probably NOT. (Sorry, nice idea, but EVEN VMWare uses a mix of HD and RAM physical space for each OS instance to do what it does).

    Knoppix actually has everything archived on its CD-- it loads what you ask for into RAM, and RAM is your virtual drive. When you close it, it frees up RAM sopace taken by the application. This archiving and unarchiving is why Knoppix takes so long to laod stuff. Most folks that want virtual session space with HD use with VMWare have two or more HDs in the box and LOTS of RAM, try a GIG or more.

    I know this does NOT get you waht you want, What I am saying is for something as big as a full XP SP2 install you would eat one heck of alot of RAM trying to virtualize to RAM unless you loaded just part of XP at a time and unarchived what you asked it to run only. THAT does not exist for XP, AFAIK, unless you have some HD space just for your test and a huge amount of RAM (like 4 GIG of RAM). THEN you could use VMWare (it likes a couple GIG really, to run multiple XP instances), which is by no means free, but is the BEST virtualizer that can host multiple OSs out there now.

    I'm not cutting you at all, just saying you need resources of some huge chunk in size to really test exactly what you want to test, and virtualizers either eat huge amounts of resources and use some HD space or use huge HD space and less RAM and only load what is running into the virtualized RAM space each OS Virtual Machine session gets. Unfortunately, that is what virtual means in today's IT world, it's something using something and not pure something out of nothing physical.
  • leishi85leishi85 Grand Rapids, MI Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    no, the one software i used takes free hdd space, and make a virtual partition out of it, and install the OS in that partition.
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    VMWare has a free trial.
  • WeedoWeedo New
    edited August 2004
    I know this is not what your looking for cuz it's not free but it is interesting. It's along those lines anyway. I've been curious about this for a while.

    http://www.hyperos2002.com/
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