Comments on: Virtualize It: Easy Ways to Mirror Your System Configuration

By: Web Worker Daily » Archive Virtualize It: Easy Ways to Mirror Your System Configuration «

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:17:21 +0000

[...] Web Worker Daily » Archive Virtualize It: Easy Ways to Mirror Your System Configuration « Returnil Virtual System Personal Edition is freeware that I highly recommend. It’s virtualization software that mirrors your whole system configuration, and it creates a virtual storage disk where you can save important files and data. Returnil’s system protection features also prevent against malware-driven or accidental unwanted changes, and the whole application is designed to let you just restart your computer to return to an optimized configuration. [...]

By: Anthony Williams

Anthony Williams — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:26:34 +0000

I use the FREE version of VMWare all the time. I have a dual-boot linux/Windows XP setup, and often run my Windows XP installation (off the live partition) under VMWare when I’m booted into Linux. It’s a bit tricky to set up, as you need to boot it under VMware to get the vmware drivers installed, but all the changes require Windows to be reactivated (twice, in my case, but you might be able to get away with just once if you do it right). Anyway, now it’s set up it works really well (if a bit slow at times).

I didn’t know about the VMware converter. I’d be interested to know if it would have worked for my situation.

Oh and a word of warning about virtual machines — try hard to ensure that the memory allocated to the virtual machine isn’t swapped to disk (VMware has a config option for this). Otherwise, if you run anything memory hungry in the VM, the virtual OS will swap to the virtual disk, and the host OS will swap to the physical disk, and your system will grind to a halt with all the disk thrashing. If necessary, reduce the size of the virtual machine’s memory, and give it a big virtual swap file.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:29:46 +0000

I use VMware frequently for little research projects.

FREE: http://www.vmware.com/download/ Both Server and Player can be found there.

They also offer (also free) VMware converter which can be used to convert machines from virtual to physical or vice-versa. Quite slick.