Virtual PC 7 with Windows 200 Pro Question...
 

I have a 12" Powerbook with 768 MB RAM and am running Virtual PC 7 with Windows 2000 Pro. I tried Windows XP Pro...but it was WAY too slow. While Windows 2000 is fairly usable, I would like to tweak it to run a little faster if possible. Anyone have any tweaks? Will disabling some "Services" help? Any other advice?

Yes, disabling unnecessary services is the way to speed it up. Search this forum (for Virtual PC specifically) or the internet (for speeding up Windows) and you will find lots of advice.

Trevor

I recommend the utility from litepc.com for this purpose. You can very easily enable/disable services in their app, and it does a good job of explaining each one. I use a "lite" version of Win2000 in VPC, and am very happy with it.

How does the "lite" version compare to the full version? Is networking, internet and printing still possible?

You just turn off the things you don't need. By default everything is on.

This is not a new VERSION of Windows. Lite PC sells an add-on which allows you to easily disable/remove certain things you don't need.

Is it easy to use and straight forward?

The tiny speed improvements from disabling services (at great risk of killing a needed process because so many are interdependant on each other) won't be very noticeable with only 768MB RAM running both OSX and VPC. Allocate only 256MB of RAM to 2000 and run OSX with the rest, shut down all other running applications while using VPC.

Disable any and all features for both VPC application and the 2000 drive image not absolutely vital (such as sound, dock integration, etc). Keep the drive image as small as possible, don't install any unnecessary applications (such as Acrobat Reader).

Any speed increases in VPC (other than switching to 95 or NT4) will be small increments with each adjustment. Nothing will greatly improve speed with one single solution or tweak.

Extremely. And it's easy to experiment with different things then undo them if needed.

What risk? Just go back and re-enable it.

Depends on what you want to accomplish. I leave VPC running all day, and leave all my X apps running when I'm using VPC. I have 1GB memory, 256 for the VPC, but my memory meter always shows 300-345 free. VPC may run faster if you kill all apps on the X side, but that may be inconvenient if you use it throughout the day like I do.

I will be upgrading my RAM to 1.25 gig this week.

[QUOTE=CAlvarez]Extremely. And it's easy to experiment with different things then undo them if needed.


What risk? Just go back and re-enable it.


The single time I hosed my XP drive image (unbootable) was restarting after following explicitly BlackViper's "safe" services disabling suggestions. I suggest anyone playing with services in Windows have a backup archived first!

I did some of Black Viper's suggestion that were "Safe" and everything so far is good.

Which is exactly why I recommend using the Lite PC utility and not just doing it yourself based upon some web site.

I also own XPLite and found the net speed gain disabling the small number of practical services to be 5% to 10% at the very most, hardly worth the $40 investment. Vastly more speed can be achieved switching to a NT4 drive image available on eBay new for $15.00. Now there's real 50% speed boost over even 2000 if the software supports it. Anything else done to XP or 2000 are just small increments that may add up with enough tweaks but again, not a single one provides anything significant, including purchasing Lite PC. I just proved that to myself running an optimized to the hilt 2000 drive image on a brand new G5 iMac with 1GB RAM, still as slow as running the same from a G3 900 with 1 GB RAM.

I don't think the 3 pieces of software that I use for the PC will run on NT4...though I am not certain. Might be worth a try for $15.

Can I assume that printing, networking, and usb all work with NT4 and Virtual PC 7?

NT4 in VPC7 is a bit tricky. It needs SP4 installed for Additions to work, so you have to download it first and burn to CD to load. Same with IE6, NT4 came with IE4 which won't upgrade from within. Additionally, sound isn't supported automatically, the SoundBlaster driver has to be hand-installed (check past VPC discussions for more info and the link I have posted to those three components NT4 needs as one file to download and simply burn to CD).

Lastly, NT4 predates USB so it's not supported. I found a USB driver for NT4 through Google with limited success results. Networking works fine and printing should work in VPC7 since printing use goes now the Mac directly.

NT4 is old, but extremely fast in VPC, is only 300MB or less drive size and stable if the software needed works in it. It also is the only version Windows OS in VCP that plays sound (and video) with any useful performance output, regardless of Mac resources available.

Calling Black Viper's "some website" is like dismissing MacOSXHints as same. His website is referenced across the web as THE authorative resource for twiddling with services. He also never implies or makes exaggerated claims of speed boosting beyond economizing on the OS RAM utilizations. I personally believe both registry edits and services adjusting should only ever be done on fully backed up installs.

Perhaps I should just stick with Windows 2000 then. Printing is a must for me as is USB. I've upped my RAM to 1.25 gig on my 12" 1.33ghz Powerbook. I've also de-selected several items in 2000 and it appears a little snappier. Perhaps I will just have to live with the fact that it takes 1 min. and 30 sec. to start up.

That's really fast! My new fast XP Pro laptop takes a good minute from deep hirbernation to settle and cold start takes more than twice as long.

When I had XP Pro loaded on Virtual PC, it took 5 minutes to start up and way sluggish. That is what prompted me to try Windows 2000.

I'm very familiar with its status. Yet you said that their advice killed your Windows installation, no? So my comment stands, use a known safe utility, rather than "some web site."

Lite PC puts a nice GUI to services modifying, but in any case the net result is minimal speed benefit within the VPC Windows OS environment, even with 1GB RAM for OSX and running 2000.

My opinion differs. No, I don't have the numbers. Seat of the pants I'd say 15-20% overall, with improved "snappiness."

Even if we only differ by 10% threshold (hard to quantify) I feel Lite PC greatly exaggerates their product's benefit to potential buyers typically desperate for sluggish speed (both PC users with ancient hardware running XP or VPC users) magic bullets.