Install win7 VPC on a Hyper-V win7 VM

Is it possible to install windows 7 virtual PC on a hyper-v windows 7 vm?
In installed the WindowsXPMode_en-us.exe first and then installed
Windows6.1-KB958559-x86.msu as instructed from the VPC home page. but I
have 2 issues.

1) when I try to run WinXP mode, I get the error msg saying "... requires
hardware-assisted virtualization..."
- note: I have a Intel 64 bit quad core machine running win srvr 2008
R2 hyper-V, and I setup a Win7 32 pro VM for this test.

2) there is no icon to start VPC. as a matter of fact, when I go too the
install dir in progman, there are only 2 iso files and no application files.
its like VPC was never installed.

Where did I go wrong? Did VPC install and I don't know where to find it?
Is my problem with running the 32 bit version of win7 pro instead of a 64
bit version?

Thanks.

 

No, it's not possible. Windows 7 Virtual PC (Windows Virtual PC is
what it is called now) has to have direct access to the processor for
its' virtualization, so it can't run in a VM.

 

Isn't the point of Hyper-V to let you run multiple guests (VMs)? Why
would you load one instance of Windows 7 in a VM under Hyper-V to then
try to load in that instance of Windows another VM? Why not create
another VM under Hyper-V and run that one as the 2nd instance of Win7
(assuming you actually have the 2nd license)?

 

Because I'm wanting to do away with the windows 2008 r2 OS and use windows 7
instead

 

That still doesn't make sense. Hyper-V is a VM solution, so why do
you need to run another VM program inside of it?

Hyper-V doesn't require an OS, it works outside the OS, its a
hypervisor.

the Hyper-V product is designed for a different use than VPC.

 

Hyper-V is its own OS. You install it. You then configure VMs that
*it* loads (much like IBM's VM operating system in which you can run
VSE, MVS, other CICS, or whatever it supports for guests). Windows 2008
isn't involved. Just install Hyper-V and then add whatever guests (VMs)
you want it to manage (which can all be running concurrently but which
might mean you need to ensure you have the licenses for those concurrent
instances).

Or is the Windows 2008 server that you are trying to get rid of the
Hyper-V Server 2008? That means you are trying to instead use Windows 7
as the host OS and then run other instances of Windows 7 as guests (if
you have the licenses for them). Just install Windows 7 in the same
partition where was Hyper-V installed (select to format the partition
when you install Windows 7) and the format wipes away Hyper-V in that
partition.

Hyper-V is designed to load first and by the hypervisor for each guest
OS that you run atop of it. You don't need to load an OS to then load
the hypervisor to load the guest. You just load the hypervisor which
loads the guests.

VirtualPC:
Load Windows -> Load VPC -> Load guests

Hyper-V
Load Hyper-V -> Load guests

Here is a diagram showing hierachy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Viridian_Architecture.svg

Hyper-V is a role provided by Windows 2008 Server. Actually, as of Oct
2008, Hyper-V is a separate variant of Windows Server 2008 (it isn't a
full Windows 2008 Server so now it's called "Hyper-V Server 2008"); see
http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/default.aspx. Similarly,
Windows XP Professional x64 is built on Windows 2003 Server but it isn't
the full blown Windows 2003 Server product with a Windows XP skin. If
you don't want Windows 2008 Server then you also don't want Hyper-V. So
asking anything about Hyper-V is irrelevant if you are looking to leave
Windows 2008 Server and instead load Windows (some supported host OS
version) and then load VPC atop of that and finally get around to
loading your guests.

If you have the hardware needed to run Hyper-V (and the disk space and
memory for the guests, I would think Hyper-V would be the better
solution.

If using Hyper-V, there's no point in using VirtualPC. You question
packs way too many terms together without any boundaries to discern just
WHAT you are asking.

"Is it possible to install windows 7 virtual PC on a hyper-v windows 7
vm?"

Does that mean:
- Can you run Windows 7 as a guest on Hyper-V? Yes.
- Can you run Hyper-V as a guest on Windows 7? No.
- Can you run Hyper-V as a guest of VPC running in Windows 7? No.
- Why is Windows 7 mentioned TWICE in your question? There is no such
thing as "Hyper-V Windows 7".
- Does "windows 7 virtual pc" (without the proper capitalization) refer
to the Windows XP compatibility mode in Windows 7 (if you have the
requisite hardware to support it)? Or do you intend to run VirtualPC
2007 on Windows 7?

Your question is so garbled that no one know what you meant to ask.

 

OK thanks. My goal was to get rid of using WnSrvr 2008 R2 (as a work
station) because of 3rd party software licensing issues and
incompatibilities. I used WnSrvr 08 R2 so I could get Hyper-V (which I'm
now seeing as a poor understanding of Hyper-V on my part).

Vanguard's email helps to clarify things as well. My goal is to have the
ability to run Windows 7 as my normal workstation OS where I work all day
long. From this Windows 7 OS I will have a 3rd party backup utility which I
will be able to do bare metal backups as well as differential backups of my
OS and data drives (which includes backing up the various VM files).
Additionally, I need to have the ability to have many different VMs to test
the software I develop.

Therefore, based on Vanguard's and your response, installing Hyper-V first
on a clean partition sounds like the way to go except for one caveat: I don't
have a good backup solution which would need to run from the Hyper-V OS so
it could backup 'everything'.

Thanks to the both of you for your input. I will have to think this through
some more.

 

Thanks for the good info. The confusion comes from my poor understanding of
Hyper-V and how things can be configured. Please see my response above to
Steve.

 

In your other post, you mentioned some licensing issues. Do you have a
valid Windows 2008 Server license (so you can use its Hyper-V role)? Or
did you lose Windows 2008 Server and am now looking for a means of
continuing to test under multiple operating systems?

One way to test under multiple operating systems is to multi-boot (no,
not that dual-boot crap that Microsoft provides but actually using a
multiboot manager, like GAG from sourceforge.net). If you don't want to
use a multiboot manager to decide from which partition on which drive to
load the OS in there, you could go with drive bays where you can slide
in different hard drives, each with a different OS that you would boot.
There are lots of variants of this multiboot or swap scheme; however,
you are running only 1 operating system at a time on the host.

If you want multiple *concurrent* guests (VMs) running at the same time
(and don't or can't use Hyper-V) then you'll need to load an OS which is
the host and then run a VM manager (VMM), like VirtualPC or VMWare
Server (which includes USB support), and then use the VMM to concurrent
load multiple guests. I'm not sure that VPC lets you assign a
particular core in a multi-core processor but VMWare Server does.
You'll also need to think about how much memory each concurrently loaded
guest will need so it is useful (since it will already be slower when
managed by a VMM under a software-emulated hardware environment).

As far as backing up goes, I would think you would use whatever backup
solution best suits the guest that you are running. If you have imaging
backup software that runs under Windows 2008 Server or under Hyper-V
2008 Server then just have it save images of the partitions in which the
guests are stored (you might want to halt/pause/stop those guests to
make sure they aren't changing when you want to save an image of their
partition). Obviously if you include those partitions in the backup of
your host (Hyper-V) then the files in the partitions for the guests get
included, too. If the guests cannot be stopped or paused, like they are
being shared, then you might have to look at backup solutions that run
within those guests. I haven't looked into what enterprise backup
solutions are available that are designed to run on Hyper-V and capture
images of multiple current guests that are running.

VirtualPC doesn't provide for snapshots (as does VMWare but their free
Server version only gives you 1 snapshot) where you could revert the VM
back to a clean baseline image. You can save the folder where you
create the VMs for VPC, VMWare Server, VirtualBox, or whatever you
choose to use, or the partitions where you run the guest under Hyper-V.
VMWare Server gives you 1 snapshot to which you can revert (and undo all
your changes). VirtualBox, I believe, gives you more than 1 snapshot.
However, when using VirtualPC, you can create a baseline VM and then use
its hard disk (.vhd) file as a base for other VMs you create but have
them use a differential VHD that is based off that baseline VM. That
is, you create your pristine or base-level VM. You then create other
VMs but their virtual drives are differential hard drives where you
specify the baseline's .vhd file. Then when you make changes in the
test VMs, you can revert them to the baseline simply by deleting their
..vhd and going through the disk wizard for them to create a new
differential virtual drive based again on that baseline .vhd file. For
example, I have a "Windows XP Pro (REFERENCE)" guest defined in VPC. I
only touch it when I want to apply updates to it (that will be present
in all VMs that use it as a baseline). I also have a "Windwows XP Pro
(TEST)" guest whose virtual drive is a differential drive based on the
REFERENCE .vhd file. That way during testing, I'm not putting my
reference .vhd at risk. If you ever update that baseline .vhd used as a
reference for the differential drives of other guests, you'll get a
warning when you start those dependent guests. I haven't bothered
checking what happens if I ignored the warning. Instead it reminds me
to stop that dependent guest, delete its .vhd file, and then go through
the disk wizard for that guest to create a new differential virtual
drive using the baseline .vhd as a reference.

 

My 2 cents:

The reason I would like to run Virtual PC in Win7 on HyperV is for XP mode.
I want to virtualize my instance of Win7 on HyperV but I also have some
software that I need to run in XP mode. For instance I want to run the
Exchange 2003 management pack but it won't run on Win7.

I really wish they would have made Virtual PC more versatile.

 

Windows VPC for windows 7 requires that the host machine supports
hardware virtualization (just as Hyper-V does). An instance of Windows 7
running in a virtual machine under Hyper-V cannot possibly do that, since it
is running on a virtual machine, not a physical machine with hardware
virtualization.