Or perhaps in the case of my Pismo with only 1GB in the first place, using half of it for VPC will slow it down?
While we're on the subject, what about fixed page file vs dynamic in a Windows VM?
Cheers
Hugh
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Windows 2000 on VPC7
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While we're on the subject, what about fixed page file vs dynamic in a Windows VM?
Cheers
Hugh
I guess it depends how the coding in VPC functions - does it really emulate Windows RAM, VRAM and the page file or pipe it through into the Mac space?
Might be fun to given an emulated Windows 128Mb RAM and turn of the page file to see if it crashes like a real world one would?
I wish I could find where this was. I know people think I'm nuts for it but I cannot find the evidence.
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I'm going to put this out there since trying to find that damn page I ran across it. The actual site is long gone, but the Wayback Machine has us covered.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090210043901/http://www.robertmoir.co.uk/win/VirtualPC2004FAQ.html
Interesting info here:
https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=651693
Key points for performance are L3 cache and full screen mode.
https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=651693
Key points for performance are L3 cache and full screen mode.
My 2 cents , since it has been a long time since I've used a Windows VM in VPC7 on a regular basis.
To my it feels going from a 2 GB G5 to a 8 GB DP G5 that VPC7 will use more than 512Mb RAM for the VM and the more memory your machine has the more fluid it runs.
But like eyoungren stated, I cannot/haven't ma(k)de any benchmarks backing this, it's just a feeling.
To my it feels going from a 2 GB G5 to a 8 GB DP G5 that VPC7 will use more than 512Mb RAM for the VM and the more memory your machine has the more fluid it runs.
But like eyoungren stated, I cannot/haven't ma(k)de any benchmarks backing this, it's just a feeling.
Since the Windows page file is just an ordinary file on the virtual hard drive image, I don't see how VPC could do anything to how the page file is used by Windows. https://web.archive.org/web/20160316112044/http://macwindows.com/VPC6.html indeed reports that turning off Windows' page file can improve performance, presuming that enough RAM has been allocated so that it's not needed.
The site mentions another trick I haven't yet come across but which looks promising:
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No need to be sorry, it's all good
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In that case, Windows 95 will be the fastest option, hands down. The RDP 5.2 client that can be installed from a Windows Server 2003 CD-ROM (\Support\Tools\MSRDPCLI.EXE) does work on 95.
I suppose we could compare the amount of memory consumed by VPC7 across systems with different RAM configurations ceteris paribus, i.e. while holding the memory allocated to the VM constant.
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And yet, there’s no hard-override for VPC7 to allocate more than 512MB to a virtual PC. I mean, I could easily hand over 2–4GB to a VPC build of Windows on my 8GB-equipped G5, but nope, it won’t let me.
It's been quite a long time but I will get a comparison of the two.
I just finished installing XP SP3, on my 1Ghz TiBook, under OS 9 with VPC6. I read somewhere that VPC7 is awful and is re-written to work on G5s in bigEndian mode.
Well, the installation took about 20-30 minutes. And was very snappy as far emulation goes. However the installation was corrupted. Every program gave a failure to initilize error. Probably due to the ISO I use (which I must admit I don't even remember where it came from). I'm tracking down another copy of XP to give it another shot. However, it did "feel" faster than VPC7 ever felt, even on faster G4s.
If the goal is RDP, there is literally a version of Windows designed only for that. It's called fundamentals for legacy PC's. It's XP as minimalistic as it gets, includes only IE and RDP along with a couple other things.
Just FYI, if you're running RDP from the 2000s era (e.g., Windows 2000), without patches (and Windows 2000 i don't think got any) you are wide open to bluekeep.
https://www.trishtech.com/2019/06/w...ty-and-how-to-patch-windows-against-bluekeep/
They don't mention bluekeep as impacting Windows 2000, but that is because it has been EOL and out of support for 10 years at this point...
So, whether or not RDP works on Windows 2000 - you should be turning it off and migrating to something else - either a new platform, or use VNC or something else other than RDP on it.
I haven't tried win2k yet, but microxp runs surprisingly well on my dual G5. It even browses the web at a slowish, but tolerable speed if you disable javascript. IA32 build of current Basilisk found here.
I guess it's one way to have a current web browser on PPC OS X if there was a really stubborn site you just had to use.
![winxp-vpc7.png]( "winxp-vpc7.png")
Cheers
I guess it's one way to have a current web browser on PPC OS X if there was a really stubborn site you just had to use.
Cheers
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Sidebar:
I find it kind of nifty how your Dock is arranged relatively similarly to the way mine is.
I tried that too with no success, for me the only near acceptable solution has been MicroXP which is always my goto XP solution on low end PCs.
Another thing I've found with VPC is there's no proportional performance increase with better Mac hardware - yes, a dual G5 will be faster than a 800Mhz iMac but not as much as you'd think (CPUz reports my OS9/VPC4/Win95 as being a 400MHZ CPU on my G4 iMac.)
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Your iTunes library looks a fun place to get lost in
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Your iTunes library looks a fun place to get lost in
It’s a project over 30 years in the constant making.
There's this puppy which predates FLP by a year and is even more minimalistic, to the point that a minimal installation doesn't even include Task Manager.
I like it. Although it's hard to imagine running a WinXp-ish OS without Task Manager, that might be just the ticket for VPC. Lightweight and meant to run in the background with few active processes. If/when some process goes wild, I suppose VPC's CTRL-ALT-DELETE input would be able to get you somewhere; if not, then just quit VPC and restart, which I've had to do plenty of times in Win98/XP when Task Manager didn't get things done. I'd imagine being meant for embedded use, this version of Windows is likely more stable than Microsoft's desktop OS's of the era.
Well, I'd rather just copy over taskmgr.exe from another XP install (or include it right from the beginning) as CTRL-ALT-DEL brings up the Windows Security dialogue but the Task Manager button does nothing. Restarting just to get rid of a rogue process seems a little over-the-top on NT unless it is, in fact, the only way out. And just like this puppy, Windows FLP is also based on XP Embedded, just not quite as stripped-down as this one. I really have to get my hands dirty with building "proper" XP Embedded images again to see how small I can get it while still maintaining a certain level of functionality. I mean, I can build an NT Embedded image that boots to a desktop and fits in less than 20 MB of disk space.
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Back when this was current, you could order 120-day evaluations of both Windows XP Embedded proper which has to be built from the ground up or this Windows Embedded for Point of Service which is a pre-configured XP Embedded setup.
Of course you're right. I didn't realize that was an option, I have no experience with these lightweight Windows versions.
I can't recall having to do much of that in WinXP, and if I understand the Windows lineage, that was the first NT-derived OS I used. XP was pretty darn stable as I recall. I still have nightmares from Win98, which was enough to drive me to the Mac back in the day.
So I had a a bit of a play with WEPoS this evening. Out of the box, a minimal installation occupies about 440 MB of disk space and has 25 processes running including Task Manager, with 80 MB of RAM being used while it sits at the desktop. So it's actually not that lightweight as far as RAM is concerned. Vigorously cutting down the number of services using MicroXP as reference brings the number of running processes down to 12 including Task Manager, with RAM usage dropping to 45 MB.
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I switched to NT 4.0 as my main OS before 98 came out because NT was a stable no-nonsense OS and only booted into 98 to play games. When Windows 2000 was released, I jumped on it right away, using it for both work and gaming. For me, XP initially brought very little to the table that hadn't been in 2000 already, apart from significantly shorter boot time. Windows 2000 had still been my main OS in 2005 when I switched to Mac OS X.
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I switched to NT 4.0 as my main OS before 98 came out because NT was a stable no-nonsense OS and only booted into 98 to play games. When Windows 2000 was released, I jumped on it right away, using it for both work and gaming. For me, XP initially brought very little to the table that hadn't been in 2000 already, apart from significantly shorter boot time. Windows 2000 had still been my main OS in 2005 when I switched to Mac OS X.
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Hu, and now?
(I'm asking just out of curiosity, since I've actually left that path of VPC/VPN/RDP on PPC ...)
Yep, this is the same OS with SP3 built-in and a new name. Windows XP Embedded has also been renamed to Windows Embedded Standard 2009.
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The current version of this is available from @Hughmac's link. If you fancy giving the older version a try, this can also be arranged
So, I thought I'd give this a shot tonight.
Found this: https://file.wiki/direct-download-windows-2000-iso-free/
Did a direct download from the Google Drive link.
After getting it all installed and trying about 5 or 6 different browsers I found K-Meleon which works.
Interestingly W2K seems to be performing better on VPC 7 than any of my Win98 installs.
Note though that I have a Quad G5 this is running on.
How much Virtual PC RAM were you able to allocate for your W2K build?
[UPDATE: Never mind, it’s buried in the about info on W2K. But I also see that that W2K build is AT/AT-compatible.]
