More Newbie questions..VMWARE this time. 2045

The Natural Philosopher

Philosopher:

I'm sure others will also answer this one. Most of my experience is with VMware's ESX Server product. I'm buttuming you're using either the newly branded GSX product (VMware Server) or Workstation products.

First, keep in mind that you don't really virtualize systems for speed. I mention this because you mention a game you use and ask how it'll run. You can pretty much count on a performance slowdown OF SOME DEGREE, depending on your system and the resources you allocate to the VM.

Remember that each virtual machine needs it's own memory. That can add up pretty quickly. One of the good things about ESX Server is that it can actually share memory between virtual machines.

As for your setup, point number 1 isn't completely clear. If you're trying to move an existing installation right off the disk, yea, there are ways to do it (at least in ESX Server) but you probably don't want to. Just install it from scratch and if you have the extra space and facilities to do so, you might consider building ISO images from your installation disks. Don't forget to install VMware tools. This will also add a graphics driver for you. In older versions of the workstation product, USB performance was dreadfully bad. I can't speak for newer versions or parallel printing directly from a VM. Worst comes to worst, just share your printer from the host system and map to it from your virtual machine.

Charles R. Whealton