VirtualBox: Answers to frequent reader questions

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	TOP STORY VirtualBox: Answers to frequent reader questions
	By Fred Langa Although Oracle’s free, open-source, virtual-PC application is a great way to safely test drive a new operating system or to keep an old OS alive, some of its complexities can be baffling. Here are answers to some of the most common questions readers have sent in about setting up and using VirtualBox.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/virtualbox-answers-to-frequent-reader-questions (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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Can any guidance be written for VMPlayer too? Thanks.

Also, how can these be used to run an OLD OS, such as WP, on a WP system?

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TOP STORY

VirtualBox: Answers to frequent reader questions

By Fred Langa Although Oracle’s free, open-source, virtual-PC application is a great way to safely test drive a new operating system or to keep an old OS alive, some of its complexities can be baffling. Here are answers to some of the most common questions readers have sent in about setting up and using VirtualBox.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/virtualbox-answers-to-frequent-reader-questions (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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Can any guidance be written for VMPlayer too?

VMware is basically the same, except it doesn’t have the additions and extensions.

If you need help with a VM you can ask on any of the VM sites, or here.

cheers, Paul

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Fred,

Thanks for another highly useful column. I’ve used both VMWare Player (free) and VirtualBox (open source). From my perspective, VB has it all over VMWare Player. I run a mix of various Windows platforms, and multiple copies of Ubuntu in support of my work (and play). Kudos to you for the article and to Oracle for a superior solution.

DVH

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Another great article, Fred. Indeed, I’ve been running XP in a virtual machine for many years now as a sandbox. I delete (recover from golden recovery point) quite often updating the recovery point as needed when I add features to my VM (after vetting those apps of course). I worry little about viruses any longer. I do run Windows Defender in my Win10 Host (Win8 and Win7 hosts previously), but no anti-virus at all in my XP VM. I do have to worry about key loggers of course, but, by deleting my VM often, it’s not been an issue for me yet (knock on wood). Of course, I had to hose IE8 several years ago now; run SE Iron browser as my main browser. Do use Chameleon (old version; still blocks super cookies. The new version only tells you you that it detects supercookies. Not even sure you can get the old version any more, but I keep it and it still works great, but sometimes I still have to bypass Chameleon in order to see a video from a website) and Privoxy (open source tool that helps bypass adds and has other security features as well). So far I’m pretty happy with my XP sandbox and it uses a lot less resources then my Win7 VM (which I keep around just in case). I do run Ubuntu in a VM as well but seldom run it; it is pretty much as fast as my XP VM too (so uses little resources; it’s also a 64-bit OS too).

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Good information – but you left off a very important reason for virtualization:

Getting off the horrible Windows platform while still being able to run an archaic, but mission-critical application that is only available on Windows and does not have a Web alternative

We have several accounting/business-type applications and we run them fine using VirtualBox on our Mac computers. We have reduced tech support, viruses, and hacking/security issues by switching our base computing platform from Windows to Mac.

Our users are “app-centric” and once they application screen appears, they really don’t care, nor need to know, the differences between the underlying platforms, but for IT, managing the Macs has been much easier and very cost-effective.

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and Dell looks to be in control of VMWare shortly thru it planned purchase of EMC, who knows what that will mean.
:cheers:

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Thanks for a great article, I’ve had my ups and downs with VB. I thought I’d mention that under a Linux environment (Kubuntu), resizing virtual drives is a bit more extensive. I had to use:

VBoxManage clonehd XP3b-disk1.vmdk XP3.vdi –format vdi
VBoxManage modifyhd XP3.vdi –resize 16384
VBoxManage clonehd XP3.vdi XP3.vmdk –format vmdk

I’ve even managed to get USB 3.0 support in XP guests using the following trick:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=74575

The greatest challenge though is often getting the VirtualBox Linux kernel driver (vboxdrv) loaded, fixing permission problems, or running special commands to reconfigure and set things up properly.

The one thing that was not clear to me initially, and delayed my use of it, was that essentially no hardware drivers are needed in the guest system–except as in the case for USB3. Now that I finally have the CD/DVD working and USB’s, I no longer need to dual boot.

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	TOP STORY VirtualBox: Answers to frequent reader questions
	By Fred Langa Although Oracle’s free, open-source, virtual-PC application is a great way to safely test drive a new operating system or to keep an old OS alive, some of its complexities can be baffling. Here are answers to some of the most common questions readers have sent in about setting up and using VirtualBox.

---

The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/virtualbox-answers-to-frequent-reader-questions (paid content, opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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Fred,
I rated you VPC article as poor. I’m sure if someone understood your article would rate it superb. I’ve never understood VPC/Sandboxie. Now, after reading your article, I know I’ll never mess with them again. I come from the pencil, paper, and slide rule era. Keep up the great articles that I understand.

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