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Virtual PC First Impressions ....

K

Kingsfoil13

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 6, 2003
26
0
Troy, NY
I'm running a dual 2.0 Ghz rev A G5, and my brand-new copy of VPC 7 with XP Pro arrived in the mail today. With some trepidation I went to install Windows on my Mac (a long sad story why I need it, but basically my school uses some software I have to run which is Windows-only.) The installation went fine, but when I clicked 'Run WIndows' at the end ... the black screen appeared in a new windows, with the white DOS cursor, and then it froze. I could move the mouse, but OS X seemed frozen as well. Even apple-option-escape or apple-tab proved unresponsive. I restarted to the same effect, so I after the next restart I ran premissions repair, uninstalled VPC, ran permissions repair again, restarted, and installed all over again.

Unfortunately No Luck -- this time we made it as far as the windows logo before crashing. Differently this time though - the grey screen of multilingual death made its appearance.

After four or five uninstalls and reinstalls, and the same event each time, I give up. Since there is no Troubleshooting section in the manual, and MS has a 1-900 help number, I'm looking for any good ideas anyone has. Help?

My system specs:

rev A Dual 2.0 G5
OS X 10.3.5
200GB Western Digital HD
512MB stock Apple RAM + 2.0 GB Crucial RAM on four chips
 
make sure you trash the prefs for Virtual PC too, and is your external drive hooked up while you are trying to use VPC? that might cause a problem, but im not too sure
 
This is troubling. I was hoping that MS take on VPC would be as good a piece of software as Office for Mac (which I realize isn't perfect, but I have to have it and it works, so I am not complaining). Oh well, I don't have to upgrade :rolleyes:
 
Further Adventures...

I just trashed the prefs in both my user folder and the general library, as suggested. Then I reinstalled... this time the first disk took twenty minutes instead of two, and when I started windows (the last install screen has a button labeled 'start windows') I got the black screen and then immediately a Mac OS X popup alert with a red stop sign, whose error read:

An Unhandled error occured when running the PC "Windows XP Professional".

Unhandled PowerPC exception 0x700 - Program Fault.

The only button was 'Reset' which instantly produced the same error recursively.
 
Further Adventures, Part II

So I force-quit VPC with apple-option-escape, and then I launched it again (Applications > VPC 7). It starts, and I select the image "Windows XP Professional" which I think the all-in-one installer made automatically. When I launch it, I get the OS X pop-up alert window "No C disk is specified. Althout you may still boot from a PC floppy, it is recommended that you specify a C boot disk." I can choose either Settings or Continue. COntinue produces errors in the DOS command line, asking for a boot device. Settings drops me back to the image's settings screen, where I can pick a Drive (all three are set to None.) If I click 'Select..." a Hard Drive document, it asks me to locate a file. I have no idea about this part of where one should be (this is my first time with VPC), so I cancel, since it won't let me specify the image of the Windows XP Professional virtual machine, and that is the only file i know it created. (I know that shouldn't be it, it was just my only thought.) It says 'new disk images can be created with the Virtual Disk assistant.' where and how do I use this app?

For reference, I have never had VPC before, and this is a legit, store-bought, brand-new copy. I bought VPC 7 because I needed the G5 compatibility.

I am also running shapeshifter and menumeters. Seems like a good next step to try all this without them on, even though it makes no sense, since it seems like a corrupt image. Could my install disks contain a corrupt disk image?
 
Suck it up and call MS...complain too, if you can. If you do get it working look at some old posts about how to get VPC to run faster.

I have VPC 6.1, so here goes my help. Install it, but do not create a new PC. Instead, repair permissions and restart. Now create the new PC...give it all the RAM possible. After it is done, try not starting the new PC and instead repairing permissions and restarting. Then try it. Best I can do...good luck.
 
Gee, I dunno...sounds like a successful install to me. You wanted a Windows experience on your Mac, right? Sounds like some of the experiences I've had installing Windows on various PC's over the last 12 years! Crashes, freezes, cryptic error messages...yep, they're all there :eek:

Sorry, couldn't resist!

Seriously though, I feel your pain. Good luck with the M$ 900 number, too. Geez, what a ripoff...

WCat
 
Kingsfoil13 said:
So I force-quit VPC with apple-option-escape, and then I launched it again (Applications > VPC 7). It starts, and I select the image "Windows XP Professional" which I think the all-in-one installer made automatically. When I launch it, I get the OS X pop-up alert window "No C disk is specified. Althout you may still boot from a PC floppy, it is recommended that you specify a C boot disk." I can choose either Settings or Continue. COntinue produces errors in the DOS command line, asking for a boot device. Settings drops me back to the image's settings screen, where I can pick a Drive (all three are set to None.) If I click 'Select..." a Hard Drive document, it asks me to locate a file. I have no idea about this part of where one should be (this is my first time with VPC), so I cancel, since it won't let me specify the image of the Windows XP Professional virtual machine, and that is the only file i know it created. (I know that shouldn't be it, it was just my only thought.) It says 'new disk images can be created with the Virtual Disk assistant.' where and how do I use this app?

For reference, I have never had VPC before, and this is a legit, store-bought, brand-new copy. I bought VPC 7 because I needed the G5 compatibility.

I am also running shapeshifter and menumeters. Seems like a good next step to try all this without them on, even though it makes no sense, since it seems like a corrupt image. Could my install disks contain a corrupt disk image?
Click to expand...
The logical place to look for a hard drive document is the Documents folder.
 
The only thing created in my documents folder (as shown by doing a file search for all files created or modified today, and weeding them down to the ones made by VPC) is a directory "Virtual PC List" which contains "Windows XP Professional.vpc7". this seems to be the virtual machine, but not its virtual hard drive. If someone could give me a quick rundown of how this whole thing breaks up its file structure, so I can get past the dumb questions and into how this works, that would also be great.

I'll try that advice that worked from 6.1. Sounds complex and annoying, but then, making windows work on a PC is just that, so why should it be any different here?
 
WCat said:
Gee, I dunno...sounds like a successful install to me. You wanted a Windows experience on your Mac, right? Sounds like some of the experiences I've had installing Windows on various PC's over the last 12 years! Crashes, freezes, cryptic error messages...yep, they're all there :eek:

Sorry, couldn't resist!

Seriously though, I feel your pain. Good luck with the M$ 900 number, too. Geez, what a ripoff...

WCat
Click to expand...

This really, really, really makes me appreciate OS X, Apple's very attentive and helpful 1-800 number, their GUI design.....
 
Success?

I created a new user account in OS X, made it an admin account, and installed in it. After only two or three uninstalls, reinstalls, and crashes, I actually got as far as the Windows startup and setup screens. Then windows crashed, and I had to force-quit VPC, but then on the next startup I was succesful, getting clear to the rolling hills desktop, in striking 16-bit low-rez color.

Then windows informed me I was at risk due to the lack of virus software installed on my machine. Home, sweet home. Yes, I am in Windows-land now.

Further reports as events warrant .. but the summary seems to be, it conflicts with something (maybe) and a new account (and a lot of patience) help.

Because Windows requires intenet-connected activation in addition to a serial number, this peice of software looks hard to share with friends, or even install on multiple Macs.
 
1-900 #? WTF!?!

Go to http://www.microsoft.com/mac/contactus.aspx and call that # or e-mail them. 1-800-426-9400; M-F, 6:00 AM - 5:30 PM Pacific time. It's their crappy product. You just bought it, it better be under a warranty.

I played with VPC 6.1 on a dual G4 at the Apple Store awhile ago, and it crashed. Windows, not the Mac OS. It was a fresh install BTW, nothing in it but Windows. I had to wait for it to "restart" to try it, and besides being slower than my oldest PC, it wouldn't do anything right. Version 2 was better on my old 6400 running OS 8 and SoftWindows was better than that.

This doesn't give me much hope for VPC 7. Looks like I'll be keeping my POS homebuilt PC for the Windows stuff I need to do when I get an iMac.
 
>2GB

Yeah, sounds like the 2.5 GB of RAM is the culprit (actually, sounds like MIcrosoft's programming is the culprit, but, you know.)

Still can't beleive the 1-900 number in the manual. That is some kind of arrogance.

Either way I have it running stably in that virgin account I created for it - no idea why it works there and not in my regular (admin) account. The install there was crash-ridden but since then it works fine.

Still, it is MUCH slower (feeling) than the P4 2.8 Ghz HP tower which I use. I was hoping a dual 2.0 64-bit G5 would be insane, even through a windows emulator. Sorry, no.

Oh well.
 
Kingsfoil13 said:
Still can't beleive the 1-900 number in the manual. That is some kind of arrogance.
Click to expand...
I didn't notice a 900 number, I called the Washington number listed on the web site for free installation support on all MS products. (Toll and long distance may apply ;-) )
 
Like I said, call 1-800-426-9400 on Monday. If nothing else, to complain. Maybe they'll have a fix before they re-direct you to a billion other places.
 
its a known problem with G5's with 2GB or more of RAM, wait for a patch before it will run on the admin account, or remove 512MB of that ram .
 
AHDuke99 said:
its a known problem with G5's with 2GB or more of RAM, wait for a patch before it will run on the admin account, or remove 512MB of that ram .
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, but I have to laught at that. What, they didn't know that G5s could have 2GB or more of RAM and an admin acount. Hell, its that kind of person that will have that much RAM and run VPC. LOL, dumb ass MS.
 
varmit said:
I'm sorry, but I have to laught at that. What, they didn't know that G5s could have 2GB or more of RAM and an admin acount. Hell, its that kind of person that will have that much RAM and run VPC. LOL, dumb ass MS.
Click to expand...

thats what you get with M$ .. nothing is ever complete, takes them forever. This VPC doesnt have all the features it was supposed to have, like native graphics support. I read where by SUMMER 2005, all of this should be added into VPC 7.5 or whatever. Lousy microsoft ....
 
Kingsfoil13 said:
The only thing created in my documents folder (as shown by doing a file search for all files created or modified today, and weeding them down to the ones made by VPC) is a directory "Virtual PC List" which contains "Windows XP Professional.vpc7". this seems to be the virtual machine, but not its virtual hard drive. If someone could give me a quick rundown of how this whole thing breaks up its file structure, so I can get past the dumb questions and into how this works, that would also be great.

I'll try that advice that worked from 6.1. Sounds complex and annoying, but then, making windows work on a PC is just that, so why should it be any different here?
Click to expand...

Actually, I believe that file IS your virtual hard drive
 
the only problem I have with it now is that when switching from app to app, like ichat, while using VPC, it hangs up. It may be because I associated to much ram to the OS, but it never happened in VPC 6. But overall, it's a nice improvement, I will wait for my final judgement when they release the update with native graphics support, which the XBOX team is implementing. Since they also have to do it for the XBOX II, to make those x86 XBOX I games run on the PPC in the XBOX II. After all said and done, I might actually be happy M$ bought VPC. THey are slow, but COnnectix never attempted to make 3d gaphics support past VPC 3 because they said it was to hard to implement and they weren't going to attempt it. Once it's out, we can play Windows games, and many things will be smoother. I just hope they don't call that VPC 8 and charge me $100 for it.
 
AHDuke99 said:
Once it's out, we can play Windows games, and many things will be smoother. I just hope they don't call that VPC 8 and charge me $100 for it.
Click to expand...
The same thing worries me. I don't have VPC 7, but I was going to buy it if it had native graphics support. Does anyone think this will be a free update? I doubt it, but it's nice to dream... :rolleyes:

JOD8FY
 
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