PowerMac G5: Virtual PC + Windows: One rough relationship.

If there’s one thing I have learned with using Microsoft’s Virtual PC for Mac 7.0.3, it’s this: “It is slow as #$%&… You’ll probably die waiting for it”. But I decided to play around and see what I could do with it. I’ll explain.

I’m sorry if my language is a bit strong, however I find no other way of putting it. I even tried to compile a recent(ish) version of QEMU (2.5.0), to which it worked with the assistance of MacPorts and a few other bits and bobs, but kept freezing on boot! So I had to resort to Virtual PC. It might be increasingly slow but at least it works.

I’m in a mission to push my G5 to the limits at this moment in time, especially for carrying out my projects on. I have Lubuntu 16.04 on a separate HDD but the only problem is, is that I have to remember to boot the other drive every time… There is no PowerPC version of NodeJS (what a nightmare) which I use for my projects.

Please note this is my brain talking to me:

So why Virtual PC? What am I doing exactly?

I came up with the suggestion to run a small Windows installation with Virtual PC so I wouldn’t have to keep switching between drives at boot time. One problem: Ideally I would need Windows Vista/7 at most to carry on with my projects. Problem is, is that it may not work… or will it?

Virtual PC is so slow…

Yes, it is. VERY. But it is the answer to help me do stuff.

But isn’t it only supported up to Windows XP Professional?

Yes, it is. Only up to XP, and of course no mention of Vista or 7. Although my G5 is 64-bit, Virtual PC can only run 32-bit versions of Windows…

So, what next then?

To be honest, I could load XP on and just use that, but after the attack on the NHS and various other businesses and individuals around the world with the WannaDecryptor ransomware I didn’t think that was a suitable path to go down.

…and that means what exactly?

I’m going to try my best and install Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit) with Virtual PC.

You can’t be serious?

I’m not joking. How you gonna know if you don’t try it…

Okay enough brain talk now….

Back to the story.

So I made the ultimate decision to try and install a slightly newer version of Windows (Vista/7), i.e the NT 6.0 family. I have seen a YouTube video where someone had installed Windows 7 Ultimate within Virtual PC (so it’s possible).

Virtual PC in general is a tough nut to crack… You can only have maximum 512 megabytes (MB) of allocated RAM and up to 16 megabytes for the video. Even when you modify the RAM in the package it’s contained within (a .plist file), it simply won’t work. What cheesed me off more was the fact that ISO images over 2.2 Gigabytes can’t be used either, and the copies of Windows Vista and 7 I had were 2.4 gigabytes and above!

For those who have used Virtual PC, when you create your machine you get a virtual disk that’s created for you.

• This disk is normally 15GB in size by default (Wasn’t aware of this)…
• It’s normally unformatted in some instances (depending on your options).

I’ve created a virtual machine to install Windows 7 on… and there’s some things that I had to change before I could continue:

• Hit the DEL button to enter setup and: Disable Quiet Boot; Enable ACPI Aware setting (Set this to Yes).

To enter the BIOS, hit DEL during boot. You need to set the “ACPI Aware OS” setting under the Power tab to yes in order to install Vista and 7.

Great, now I can boot the Windows 7 Installation DVD which I burned myself. I had captured the DVD Disk with the 32-bit version of Windows 7 and had prepared an 80GB virtual disk for it to go on. Right, let’s get cracking…

I am using a LaCie D2 Extreme 200GB FireWire Drive to save the hard disk images on…

Here’s where the crap hits the fan…

I knew to myself that this wasn’t going to be an easy task with many problems on the way, but what I was about to experience caught me off-guard.

1st attempt: Windows 7 installation got to about 6%, then refused to install because various files were corrupt. Thought, maybe I didn’t burn it right so tried again. Same error.

2nd attempt: Tried Windows Vista… Same as the first attempt. Corrupt files on the disk. Tried again, same error.

3rd attempt: Resorted back to Windows 7 disk. Made the attempt again. Got to about 5/6%, but this time I was getting various BSOD errors… This is odd… I was getting Kernel errors now.

4th attempt: Tried Windows 7 again. This time I recreated the virtual machine and created the 80GB virtual disk on my normal OSX Hard Drive. BSOD’s came up a few times but slowed down, installation was still saying I had corrupt files…

The 5th, 6th, 7th…: I’m sure you get the picture. It isn’t budging…

I was getting very fed up with this…

…as you can imagine. I didn’t believe the disks were corrupt so I opened up VMWare Workstation 12 Player on my HP EliteBook 8470P running Windows 10 Pro, tried them… They were working PERFECTLY!

“What the actual hell… How??”

By this point I was confused… Really confused. So it seems that Virtual PC wasn’t agreeing with something here, so I continue to have a moment of Trial and Error. This had lasted for nearly 3 days. I just couldn’t understand it.

Myles. Maybe you should give up now…

My eyes are killing me, my head is killing me, and I am at my wits end. You’re probably asking why I am doing this, and that it’s not worth it. Maybe so, but if you have determination to do something you’re gonna keep trying and that was I did. I carried on.

So “where you at” then?

I know the ISO images I burned are not corrupted at all. They work completely fine. It’s got to be how I am configuring these machines so I went back and had a look. I noticed that the installations were throwing up errors on the occasions I had made certain customisations to my Virtual Machine (i.e Custom Hard Disk and settings), so I decided to stick with the default 15GB virtual drive that’s pre-generated and only change the RAM settings. All the files (VHD, config file, etc…) are together on my normal OSX hard drive, with the DVD disk in the drive. Now it’s time to try again.

An interesting but unusual discovery.

I attempted on installing Windows 7 on a 80GB virtual disk. This presented quite a number of problems including Blue Screen errors. I revert to using the 15GB default sized virtual disk…

The installation goes further, further, furTHER… OMG IT’S INSTALLING, IT’S INSTALLING (I’m now shouting at this stage…)! Finally, I could smile a bit, but it wasn’t over yet. I now had to go through the other stages (Final setup, driver configuration etc.).

Did Windows 7 manage to install after all?

I am happy to report it did install Windows 7 Ultimate successfully. Overall it had taken just under 2 hours on this final attempt. It’s quite slow, but in fairness it doesn’t really matter to me as such. I’m just glad to see it on my PowerMac, even if it is in a sluggish condition. I was also successful on installing Windows Vista Business x86 as well in the same format as well.

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate is booting up nicely. Takes a while though.

Microsoft Windows Vista Business starting up. Again, this takes a good 2–3 mins.

So I now have Vista and 7. What next?

Well I am gonna need to find some drivers for a start. Virtual PC comes with Additions (the ISO with some drivers), but I believe previous versions of Windows (XP, 2000, and 9x) had come with included sound drivers (AC97, SoundBlaster 16 etc.), as well as the ethernet drivers. When booting up Windows 7, it failed to identify and install the Ethernet and Sound drivers. The same issue had cropped up in Vista too. I’ll look for those in my own time. My main intentions are to setup minimal versions of NodeJS and a standard NGINX webserver so I can do my projects. It does seem to recognise USB nicely so I may use a USB Wi-Fi Adapter and even a USB soundcard. The sound doesn’t really matter and it isn’t a priority, but it would be nice to have.

If you look in the right hand side of the Virtual PC there isn’t any Sound or Ethernet.

Same for Windows Vista… No sounds or Ethernet. I can use USB though. I might do that…

Strangely enough, to my astonishment the Windows Vista screensaver works quite well.

The default Windows Vista screensaver works without a hitch…

Here’s an interesting pointer.

Virtual PC emulates a Pentium II processor with MMX. Just in case you didn’t know. I certainly didn’t know. The lowest Intel processor I have come into contact with is a Pentium III. Performance from both Vista and 7 is sluggish, however I noticed that Vista was a little more responsive. Understandable. But you know what it doesn’t matter to me as such. Like I say, I’m glad to see I got it on there. Seems to work okay(ish) when I use the Windows Classic theme. I’m going to build a custom image of Windows 7 using the Windows Automated Installation Kit and possibly integrate a few things like a few programs and drivers. Managed to install 7-zip, meaning I can have a look at archives easily when I need to.

System Info for my Vista box (1)

System Info for my Vista box (2)

System Info for my Vista box (3)

15GB is not a lot… How do I get around it?

I’ll be honest here. Although 15GB isn’t a lot, it’s reasonable as I won’t really be hooking these up to the internet (isolated). In case I do need more space, Virtual PC can take up to 3 virtual drives so I may add one to it and see what happens. I’m going to retry installing Vista and 7 on my LaCie FireWire drive to see what happens in the coming months. I’ll update this as well. For now though I can play around with it a little.

Windows 7 Ultimate had taken literally just over half of the space. The same was apparent in Vista too.

So here’s what I learned…

• You can install the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 on Virtual PC.
• Running them will be quite slow though. Patience is essential.
• Virtual PC emulates a Pentium II processor with MMX Technology.
• The maximum amount of RAM is 512 megabytes and the maximum VRAM is 16 megabytes.
• A virtual machine is created with a 15GB virtual disk. I noticed it seemed to dislike larger sized disks. I will be trying it with 20GB or 40GB to see what happens though.
• ISO Images that are over 2.2 gigabytes are unusable. You’re better off burning an ISO to disk and using your SuperDrive/DVD Drive. Although you can try and use an ISO image over 2.2GB by editing the configuration file. That might work…
• The American Megatrends AMIBIOS it came with was very, very basic… You can barely do anything. My goodness it’s quite terrible.
• Windows Vista could take longer to install because of the Performance Test it undergoes during the final stages of configuration.
• If you want to do relatively intense things with Vista and 7 within Virtual PC, the answer is: “Nah… Forget it. There’s a chance you’ll be there all day”.
• Virtual PC can be slow and very fussy. It has the ability to drive you up the wall a bit…

I think we’re done here.

Yup, I am done. So there you have it. A little bit of persistence pays off I guess :)

You can find me on Twitter, here.

Cheers.