X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to djgpp-bounces using -f NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 05:43:20 -0500 From: "Alexei A. Frounze" Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp References: Subject: Re: no DPMI memory under Windows vista Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 03:39:31 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3028 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3028 Message-ID: Lines: 50 NNTP-Posting-Host: 67.170.72.236 X-Trace: sv3-qQ3JmfkCCXK0XhMEe/RfmVOFUXHF3n+uVGKUqg6tB/fjDr8OPBeER6VocedF5sJI6n16r1cqmSO4rqA!Hd2Ssde7Pl0tIPqTLaXbJyuThiXpYipGPmI/ur9hIUugl4CMx5s79R6mwCkLubH5G/PmS6U/r/9D!iXv1Ub+VaCBi6z0jM5zYicKyr7ru9Q== X-Complaints-To: abuse AT comcast DOT net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: dmca AT comcast DOT net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.34 To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Simply put, a virtual machine is effectively a fake computer, an emulated computer, a computer in computer. It allows you to install another OS within the virtual machine on top of the OS that you already have and work in that VM as if that was a real separate computer. The vurtual machine utilizes the real disk and RAM and some of the CPU time to function. The virtual machine is comprized of virtual devices, that is, it has a virtual disks (inside a file on the real one or can use floppy/CD/DVD directly), virtual display (a window), virtual network and so on. The virtual machines allow you to try various OSes and software w/o damaging your OS, it sandboxes that software. They also allow to change various system parameters inside them (disk/RAM sizes, etc). You may have many different VMs at the same time. More on this (if this is an entirely new topic for you) can be found here: . It is very easy to install Virtual PC. It may, however, take some time to create a working VM inside it -- you need to create it, specify disk/RAM sizes and other parameters, then you need to boot the VM from a floppy/CD image file or from the real floppy/CD to install the OS inside the VM just like you'd do on the real PC. Then you may need to set up either networking or share folder to be able to transfer data between this virtual OS/machine/PC and your normal OS. I don't know if any network in DOS works, but if you install in there windows 9x/xp, transferring data will be simple. Cautions: a running VM may take up significant amount of RAM, disk size and CPU time. It generally runs slower than it would have had it run on the real hardware directly w/o any virtualization/emulation. Sound may not work. I haven't used VPC much (just a few times) and in older versions there was no sound support. I don't remember if it's in 2007 version or not. VGA planar modes may be noticably slower compared to 8/16/24/32 bpp graphics modes. If I had to make a DOS VM from one or few DOS installation/bootable floppies, it would take me about 30 mins to create a VM and install DOS in there. YMMV, obviously. Windows installation will take more time, apparently, just because it's much bigger. But, once it's installed, you may save the VM file(s) as the base and if/when you screw the VM, you can pull those files with the freshly installed OS and start over in no time. VMs are your friend. HTH, Alex wrote in message news:cbc DOT 10c299c6 DOT 33643fde AT aol DOT com... what's VM,VPC,... ? it can't be so difficult, no need to modify the kernel, I assume. How much time do I need to inform,install,learn about a way around it ? (just an informal estimate)