Windows 7 beta in a Virtual PC, II

As I discussed last Friday, I’ve been trying to run the Windows 7 beta, build 7000, in Virtual PC 2007 for testing purposes. Today, it’s running a lot better.

I made two changes: I upgraded Virtual PC 2007 to SP1, and I gave Windows 7 the 1024 MB of RAM it needs. The first change allowed me to install the VM Additions, and the second change made it run much faster. It still isn’t a speed demon, but I don’t expect much from a Virtual PC running on a Pentium 4 host, since the native CPU doesn’t have hardware support for virtualization.

Now the fact is that SP1 for Virtual PC 2007 came out last May. I thought that I’d installed it on this machine, but apparently that wasn’t the case. If you’re planning to install Windows 7 beta in Virtual PC 2007, do make sure that you apply the service pack to Virtual PC 2007 first.

Also make sure that you apply the updates to the Windows 7 beta before you run Windows Media Player, whether or not you’re running it in a virtual PC. There’s a bug in the unpatched beta that can silently corrupt MP3 files.

The file drag and drop problem can be worked around by using networking or Virtual PC shared folders. Copy and paste of text seems to work fine. The sound problem is annoying, but not fatal, and I imagine it won’t be long before it’s fixed.

I was pleasantly surprised to find three options for Windows 7 antivirus programs online: AVG, Norton, and Kaspersky. I chose Kaspersky myself, only because it’s the only one of the three I’d never used before.

Please keep sharing your Windows 7 beta virtualization experiences here. It’s incredibly useful to hear from others struggling with similar problems, especially when shared information leads to a quick solution.