Virtual Machine and Drivers

[ebayme]

Hello Everyone,

First time poster and new Mac owner. Never had a Mac before but slowly coming to like it. Specially how work friendly they are.

My job requires me to have both so to avoid having to travel with two computers I am trying to find the best and most convenient way to run a copy of W7 on it as well.

Computer is: MacBook Air 2012, 8gb ram, 512 GB (if that matters).

I've looked into different options and I really like the idea of running a virtual machine on my Mac for the few instances I have to use Windows. That being said, I'm not sure how this all works with drivers and so on.

Scenario. We have products that don't use commonly released drivers. We have to install them separately and then use the plug and play to install them.

If I run a VM on my Macbook, will I be able to install these drivers, use the equipment in the same fashion as I would if I was running an actual PC with Windows 7? Or, is the VM using Mac drivers? If it's running a true copy of W7 does it use the same plug and play ability of Windows 7 where it goes online to find the drivers for commonly used equipment?

I'm trying to avoid Boot camping my computer just to find out that VM would have simply done the trick.

Looking forward to your replies.

Thank you very much for your time!

 

[Dark Dragoon]

Scenario. We have products that don't use commonly released drivers. We have to install them separately and then use the plug and play to install them.

If I run a VM on my Macbook, will I be able to install these drivers, use the equipment in the same fashion as I would if I was running an actual PC with Windows 7? Or, is the VM using Mac drivers? If it's running a true copy of W7 does it use the same plug and play ability of Windows 7 where it goes online to find the drivers for commonly used equipment?

Windows inside a virtual machine works exactly the same as Windows running on hardware, albeit a bit slower.
The only difference is that it is running on (mostly) virtual hardware instead of the physical hardware.

If your equipment is connected via USB you can connect it directly to the virtual machine running Windows, at that point it is pretty much exactly the same as if you connected the USB device to any other computer running Windows. So you can install whatever Windows drivers are needed the same as normal.

 

[ebayme]

Windows inside a virtual machine works exactly the same as Windows running on hardware, albeit a bit slower.
The only difference is that it is running on (mostly) virtual hardware instead of the physical hardware.

If your equipment is connected via USB you can connect it directly to the virtual machine running Windows, at that point it is pretty much exactly the same as if you connected the USB device to any other computer running Windows. So you can install whatever Windows drivers are needed the same as normal.

Thank you so much for this information. This is what I thought but I figured I would ask before I go through the trouble of downloading a VM client, Windows 7 and all that.

 

[opinio]

Peripherals and drivers have always been the Achilles heel of the VM. I have had a few problems installing some Windows based USB peripherals such as a Windows TV tuner. Generally HD are all ok.

I have used Virtual box and Parallels and have found Parallels the best for drivers (but not bullet proof).