What You Can Expect In Virtual PC 2007 Part II

In part one of this series, I introduced you to Virtual PC 2007 and outlined some of the new features you can expect to see. Part two of this series will continue looking at what’s new in the latest release of Virtual PC.

PXE Booting
When setting up a desktop computer, administrators often perform network-based installations. The virtual machine network adapter in Virtual PC 2007 now supports Pre-boot Execution Environment (PXE) boot. This lets you perform network-based installations of guest operating systems as you if you were setting up a physical computer, without using a PXE boot floppy disk.

Multiple Monitors
Some versions of Windows, such as Windows XP and Windows Vista, support multiple monitors. Virtual PC 2007 also provides support for this feature. For example, if you have two monitors, you can now run a virtual machine in fullscreen mode on one monitor while working with the host operating system on the other monitor.

Hardware-Assisted Virtualization
Another new feature in Virtual PC 2007 is support for Hardware-assisted Virtualization that improves performance of virtual machines. This feature is available on computers with Central Processing Units (CPUs) that support Hardware-Assisted Virtualization and that have it enabled in the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS).

You can enable Hardware-Assisted Virtualization on a virtual machine basis through the virtual machine settings.

[tags]virtual machine, networking[/tags]