windows xp

I don't know too much about Dosbox. But VirtualBox runs independently of Boot Camp. It can be run on the Mac OS X side of things, and doesn't use the partition used by Boot Camp. And yes it will run XP SP 3.

puneet2788 wrote:

i am using mac os x 10.7.2. and simulataneously using windows 7 via bootcamp.

can i further use windows xp in windows 7 through dosbox or virtualbox??

If you upgrade Win 7 to Pro, you can run XP Mode within Win 7; the XP installer is free and is really XP Pro. The installer relies on Virtual PC for the emulation. You can also use VMWare's Player; it's a bit tricky to set up but offers more features for running XP Mode. Or, you could switch from Boot Camp to VMWare Fusion, install Win 7, upgrade it to Win 7 Pro, and do the same thing with XP Mode while running Lion at the same time.

However, since nothing is ever simple, you'll need more installed memory for that. And unless you've got an i7 processor, XP Mode will run painfully slowly in a virtual machine. It might run better in Boot Camp.

VirtualPC isn't even an option for Intel Macs. Intel Macs run all Windows PC software in virtualization, not emulation. VirtualBox is an virtualization engine for Macs that does not require restarting. It is slightly slower than boot camp not because the Intel CPU is being emulated, like what VirtualPC did, but rather because it has to share memory with the Mac OS X environment. I run XP SP 3 without any serious slowdown on VirtualBox on an iMac 5,1 with 2 GB of RAM and 10.7.1. Games might notice the issue, but video and audio do not. That's not like what VirtualPC did, which couldn't even handle simple audio files on Windows 2000 on an iMac G5. The MacBook Pros able to run 10.7 are just as good as the iMac I have in terms of processing power. To learn more about Windows options for Macs, see this user tip: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2741

a brody wrote:

VirtualPC isn't even an option for Intel Macs. Intel Macs run all Windows PC software in virtualization, not emulation...

I know that; Virtual PC wouldn't be running on the Mac, it would be running inside Windows 7 Pro either virtualized in VMWare Fusion (which is what I'm familiar with) or in Windows 7 Pro running in Boot Camp (though I've never tried that). XPMode is a feature of Win 7 Pro, though the support files have to be downloaded separately and one of those support files is a Virtual PC installer. The i7 and Westmere processors (and maybe others) have a feature which allows nested VM's (i.e., one VM run inside another) to access the processor directly so that XPMode is virtualized rather than emulated. Done that way, XPMode runs just about as quickly as XP Pro does by itself as a VM, which frankly surprised me. Other processors can't do that so the nested VM does run in emulation, which is painfully slow. When Microsoft first released XPMode, the more capable processors were mandatory. I guess enough people complained that Microsoft issued a patch which allowed XPMode to run on less capable processors too.

Thanks for the link, which is a walk part way down memory lane. I still have an OrangePC card sitting in an 840AV; one of these days I should try and get that working again...