Parallels for Windows & WindowsXP

mrochester · 20 Sep 2007 at 23:14

I'm running Parallels in Windows Vista and I have installed WindowsXP using it. The problem is, I am unable to install the Radeon drivers in XP (the install reports that no compatible hardware was found, and quits). This means that the games I wanted to play don't work very well. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get the Radeon drivers installed?

marc2003 · 20 Sep 2007 at 23:23

you are kidding right? parallels is a virtual machine. it's emulating hardware. not using the real thing.....

did you buy it? vmware server, virtual pc and virtualbox all do the same for free.

mrochester · 20 Sep 2007 at 23:26

OK so what's the point of these programs then? Only the very basics work (ie, browsing), and if you wanted to do that, why not just use the OS you have installed anyway? The whole reason I tried it was to run the programs that arne't compatible with Vista!

And no, I didn't pay for it.

marc2003 · 20 Sep 2007 at 23:35

the point is for testing/developing. maybe you don't want to risk something on your main pc. install it in a virtual machine. web developers who run vista might want to keep an xp virtual machine with ie6 to test. or you can have multiple machines running at once to simulate a networking setup. it's also handy if you're a linux noob and fancy dabbling with it without messing up your pc. lots of reasons.... instead of having 3 or 4 old machines kicking about, people can run all these simultaneously on one pc.

playing games in a virtual machine could well happen in the future, just not yet.

mrochester · 20 Sep 2007 at 23:38

marc2003 said:
the point is for testing/developing. maybe you don't want to risk something on your main pc. install it in a virtual machine. web developers who run vista might want to keep an xp virtual machine with ie6 to test. or you can have multiple machines running at once to simulate a networking setup. it's also handy if you're a linux noob and fancy dabbling with it without messing up your pc. lots of reasons.... instead of having 3 or 4 old machines kicking about, people can run all these simultaneously on one pc.

playing games in a virtual machine could well happen in the future, just not yet.

Funnilly enough I tried installing Linux too, but that wouldn't even boot (typical for Linux really from my experience) so gave up on that right away. I would have thought it'd be quite easily to get the graphics card to work properly in a virtual machine. After all, it can make use of my sound card, network and CD drive.

Caged · 20 Sep 2007 at 23:44

It's not easy, it's the holy grail of virtualisation at the moment.

marc2003 · 20 Sep 2007 at 23:49

mrochester said:
Funnilly enough I tried installing Linux too, but that wouldn't even boot (typical for Linux really from my experience) so gave up on that right away. I would have thought it'd be quite easily to get the graphics card to work properly in a virtual machine. After all, it can make use of my sound card, network and CD drive.

it's emulating your sound card, network and cd drive on the most basic level. same as it can output a display, no problem for normal windows use. but this is all software based. running hardware accelerated 3d is something quite different.