MS Virtual PC Tutorial

Most of the desktops and laptops today come with Windows 7 preinstalled. While it has new features, few users like me love to have Windows XP for some compatibility issues.
As you see that CareerCert’s Pass4sure setup doesn’t work in windows vista or 7. So we need to install XP in that.
For those who don’t know, Microsoft Virtual PC let’s you run multiple operating systems at the same time on the same physical system. You can switch between two operating systems within seconds.
In this tutorial i will show you how to install Windows XP inside Windows 7 using Microsoft Virtual PC. You can follow the same procedure if you want to install on any other version of windows like Vista or XP.

Download Video Tutorial

Requirements:
1. Windows XP CD or .ISO CD image.
2. Microsoft Virtual PC software.
3. One hour free time.

Procedure: (Click on the images to enlarge)
1. Download and install Virtual PC from here.

2. Run the Virtual PC software. To do this, type Virtual PC in Vista Start menu search box and hit enter or start from desktop shortcut.

3. Click on “New” option and click “Next” to continue.

4. Select “Create a virtual machine” option from the available three options. I prefer this option as this lets you customize as you like. Click “Next”.

5. Here, type a name for the virtual machine file. The file is automatically saved to the My Virtual Machines folder. To save it to a different location, use the “Browse” button.

6. Select the operating system you would like to install using Virtual PC from the drop down box.In this tutorial we choose XP, as we are going to install none other than XP. After selecting the operating system, click “Next”.

7. If you have more than 1GB of RAM in your system, select “Adjusting the RAM” else select “Using the recommended RAM”. If you have chosen “Adjusting the RAM” then, select the amount of RAM you would like to allocate to run Virtual machine(XP) and click “Next”. (by default, it will use 128MB of RAM, if you like to keep as it is, blindly click “Next”).
I prefer 200 MB.

8. In the next screen, select “A new virtual hard disk” and once again click “Next” button.

9. In this step, browse the location where you want to create a virtual hard disk and specify a name for the virtual hard drive. Make sure that you have enough free space available in that drive. Also don’t forget to specify the size of the Virtual Hard Drive. I prefer at least 3GB.

10. Click on finish button.

11. This will open a small window called “Virtual PC Console”. Click on “Start” button to start the actual process.

You can see in below image that there is no XP boot CD in the drive yet.

12. Insert your Windows XP CD in the optical drive and choose “ctrl+Alt+Del” from Action Menu of New Virtual Machine. (No need to restart your system. System will be restarted within the console.)

You can also use a .iso CD image instead of a burned CD.
For that go to CD menu and click on “Capture ISO image“. Browse for the image and click Open. After that send “ctrl+alt+del” from Action menu. I prefer this method because installation will be fast using a image.

Hit Enter when Virtual PC console prompts to press a button to boot from CD.
You will see default XP installing environment inside the console.

13. Install the XP inside the console with the default XP procedure that you know. Once you finished your installation you will see friendly Windows XP Desktop.

14. Now, you can install all the required software’s for your Windows XP, But we need to install only Pass4sure at this moment. (Note that drivers are not required in virtual XP)

To access software setups files from our host machine(Vista or 7) we need to share a folder between Virtual XP and Host machine. To do this first we need to install “Virtual Machine Additions” in XP.
Go to Action menu and choose “Install or update virtual Machine Additions” and click ‘Continue’.

Once setup finished, the XP console will restart.

15. Now go to Edit(or Action) menu – Settings – Share Folders.

Choose a folder to share and select “share every time”.

16. Put the CareerCert’s Pass4sure setups and other softwares in that share folder and access them in Virtual XP. You can see in below image that the shared folder is showing under “Network Drives” in virtual XP console.

BTW you can also drag and drop files and folders from Host to Virtual PC console.

17. Run and install P4S Setup from shared folder and and let it restart the virtual XP console after installation.

You can start the pass4sure application from desktop shortcut.

BINGO !!!

18. To close the Virtual XP, go to Action – Close and chose “Save State“. You can also chose “Turn Off” but it will take more time to boot again.

19. To open your Virtual XP once again, select the Virtual XP from the ‘Virtual PC Console’ and click “Start”.

20. You are done!! Enjoy!!!

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