James Bannan16 December 2008, 10:00 PM
Need to keep XP running on your Vista system? Virtualization is the key and our step-by-step tutorial will get you there.
Page 6 - More VirtualBox Options
Step 6 - More VirtualBox Options
By default, and presumably to maximise compatibility during installation, there are a number of guest options which are disabled but which you'll probably find it useful to enable once the system is operational. To access these options, highlight the VM in VirtualBox and then click on "General" in the right-hand window.
Under General there are two particular tabs of interest - Basic and Advanced. Under Basic you can adjust both the system and graphics memory. The graphics memory is expandable up to the available system graphics memory - on Windows Vista you don't want to take too much away from the host or system performance will suffer.
Under Advanced you can add or remove options from the boot order and adjust the order itself. You can also enable support for CPU virtualization which will improve system performance.
You can also enable Audio support, add more network adaptors, connect to the host system's serial and USB ports, share folder between the host filesystem and the guest, and enable remote desktop access to the guest via VirtualBox's RDP server.
If you're familiar with other virtualization packages, then VirtualBox will be very intuitive. If not, spent some time playing with the other options, such as system snapshots to save a virtual guest at a point in time (very useful for writing tutorials!), moving into and out of fullscreen by using the host+F key combo.
Also, check out our other tutorials for virtualizing on different platforms.