Windows Virtual PC 2007

After building a Vista VM today, I needed a downloadable copy of SP1. That's when I stumbled upon Windows Virtual PC 2007. I knew of its existence, but must admit, I didn't realize it was free. Another thing about it astonished me:

Virtual PC 2007 runs on: Windows Vista™ Business; Windows Vista™ Enterprise; Windows Vista™ Ultimate...

Oh there were others, but no Vista Home or Home Premium. I guess I need to fork out a couple hundred dollars to upgrade.

Or, I could fire it up and see what happens. I grabbed the installer, launched it on my Home Premium laptop, and sure enough, it complained that it was not supported. It seems however, that "unsupported" does not mean "not allowed" I chose to continue, and the install finished.

I launched the program, and it immediately complained again. Yet... There is a checkbox: "Don't show this message again" Next thing you know, I'm in an installation wizard.

Now we get to find out what this thing will do. I launched the wizard to install a Fedora instance. When presented with the Operating System choices, I found the following list:

Windows 98
Windows NT
Windows 2000
Windows XP
OS/2
Windows Vista
Windows NT Server
Windows 2000 Server
Windows Server 2004

What! OS/2? You're kidding, right? I think I threw those disks away about 10 years ago. And what about Linux, damn you.

Other

Okay.

In the short wizard, I allocated 312 meg of RAM and 8 gig of disk. The VM appeared in the Virtual PC Console window, and I selected Start. Once the VM launched, I was able to click the CD menu item and select "Use Physical Drive", but it was already too late in the POST. I clicked the Action menu item, and selected "Reset". This time it launched the installer from CD.

Now, we get to see if it will install.