Using Windows in a VM, Best Solution?

[dibl]

I don't care to recompile vmware with every kernel upgrade so virtualbox works fine for me

Just FYI, the vmware kernel modules are automatically compiled the first time you try to run vmware on a new kernel - no manual compiling is needed. But I agree, vbox worked just fine the last time I used it, although I found the networking settings difficult to work out, vis-a-vis the host Linux system.

[wizard10000]

Just FYI, the vmware kernel modules are automatically compiled the first time you try to run vmware on a new kernel - no manual compiling is needed. But I agree, vbox worked just fine the last time I used it, although I found the networking settings difficult to work out, vis-a-vis the host Linux system.

Really? That might tip the scales in vmware's favor

Interesting on networking, though - I've never had an issue.

[dibl]

Fair warning -- vmware tends to lag the Linux kernel development, at times, and so those of us using new kernels run into patching issues. For example, on kernel 3.5x you need to do this. But then it works perfectly.

[Xplorer4x4]

I recently noticed that using the xorg-edgers PPA I was able to get my win 7 running in 3D

Does this mean you can apply windows themes and view thumbnails when hovering over an app in the task bar? If so, could you comment on the over all stability of the current drivers? I am not trying to get my Windows to look super fancy, but some small visual tweaks would make it more pleasurable to work in Win 7 when I have to resort to it.

[dibl]

I don't know about Fintan's "3D" for the Win 7 guest OS, but YES you do see the thumbnails when you hover your cursor over a taskbar icon. Bear in mind that vmware uses a virtual graphics system -- in Device Manager mine says it is a "VMWare SVGA 3D (Microsoft Corporation WDDM)". So that does seem to imply some 3D capability (which is of no interest to me). The real GPU in my PC is a Nvidia GTX-480 -- that may or may not be relevant to which virtual graphics VMWare is able to install on the guest.

[Xplorer4x4]

Well the reason I asked about thumbnails and themes is because I don;t have either. I have tried to cut the fat by disabling a lot of services that provide no use for me and tried a registry weak that helped as well. However, I am not able to adjust the color of the theme from the Win 7 theming engine ui. When I try to ajust the colors, it takes me to the old school gui that existed since Win 95 or win 98 I believe. I don;t believe any of my tweaks would disable the thumbnails for tasks even though I have turned off alot of the visual like animations and such. For what it is worth, Windows does report my video card as the SVGA3D just like yours does.

[dibl]

When I right-click on the Win 7 desktop, and choose "personalize", I get a nice dialog with some default choices -- looks like this:



I have left it default, but you can see that it could be changed to whatever.

I doubt the running services have anything to do with this capability -- I have not bothered to disable all the Windows services that I don't need, which would be a lot of them. But, the capabilities of your xserver-xorg-video-radeon driver might be relevant -- I'm not a radeon user so I don't know about that.

[Xplorer4x4]

As for personalizing, i was talking about when you change the window color. In a real win7 install it takes you to a screen similar to what you posted, but for my vm it takes me to the options found in Win95 to Win Xp i believe.

As for thumbnails, I know in a real Win7 I had both these problems prior to installing the drivers weather it be from windows update or amd.com.

Sent from my DROID2 Global

[Snowhog]

As the Graphics Card/GPU in a Virtual Machine is in fact 'virtualized', there are going to be some video features that just aren't available. My guess is that Windows 7, running in a VM, detects this fact, and limits what 'options' will be available to the user.

[SteveRiley]

Windows queries the video adapter for certain capabilities before it enables Aero and exposes its configuration page. One of the requirements is a WDDM-capable adapter. VMware Player and VirtualBox provide a virtualized WDDM driver, but the ability to use Aero inside a VM depends somewhat on the underlying physical hardware. One thing that helps sometimes is to crank up the amount of RAM given to the driver. IIRC, 128 MiB is the minimum.

[dibl]

As for personalizing, i was talking about when you change the window color. In a real win7 install it takes you to a screen similar to what you posted

You mean this?


That is what you get when you click the "Window Color" item at the bottom of the first screen I posted. There must be some limitation in the radeon driver that is inhibiting the VM on your system.

[Xplorer4x4]

Yep thats the window I was wanting but here is what I get: http://goo.gl/8k4vQ Thats using the high contrast theme so mine has the old Win98 color style but you get the idea.

I am thinking you guys are right. I might try the fglrx drivers again, but last time I did, it had a watermark on my screen 24/7 that had the amd logo and said testing purposes only and I could not figure out how to get it off.

Sent from my DROID2 Global

[Xplorer4x4]

Windows queries the video adapter for certain capabilities before it enables Aero and exposes its configuration page. One of the requirements is a WDDM-capable adapter. VMware Player and VirtualBox provide a virtualized WDDM driver, but the ability to use Aero inside a VM depends somewhat on the underlying physical hardware. One thing that helps sometimes is to crank up the amount of RAM given to the driver. IIRC, 128 MiB is the minimum.

I forgot to ask about this. How do I crank up the vram? I have looked through the vmware player settings and only see system ram.


Sent from my DROID2 Global

[dibl]

How do I crank up the vram?

At the considerable risk of having Steve embarrass the crap out me, I don't actually think you can increase vram separately from RAM. But under your vmware settings > Display, you have some choices, including enabling 3D acceleration. I have my display set on "auto detect" and in the grayed out right-hand side of that panel, I can see that "Accelerate 3D graphics" is checked. It also has "Use host settings", and I do have the proprietary nvidia driver with 3D enabled. So apparently it found enough juice in the underlying Nvidia graphics hardware to do that. I've only got 2GB of RAM assigned to the VM, btw. Try tinkering with that Display item and see if you can get a better result.

[SteveRiley]

Each VMware virtual machine folder includes a .vmx file. Inside this file are many more settings than those exposed by the Player's UI. I don't recall the exact setting at the moment; if you Google for "vmware player video ram size" you should be able to find the relevant entry.