[Framers] alternatives to VirtualBox in Windows

[Robert Lauriston]

Windows has its own virtual PC system. In Windows 7 it's Windows
Virtual PC, which has to be installed. In Windows 10 it's Hyper-V,
which is built in.

You can download VM images (ISO files) for various Windows releases
from Microsoft.

On Tue, May 16, 2017 at 5:51 AM, Frank Stearns <franks at pacifier.com> wrote:
>
> Older versions of FM sometimes seem unhappy running directly in a newer OS.
>
> Try VirtualBox from Oracle. It's free; you can set up a virtual XP
> environment under Win 7 or Win 10, install FM in that XP world, and away you
> go, often faster and without those quirks compared to running the older FM
> natively. (I've found the emulator offering from Microsoft to be lacking and
> unreliable. What a surprise.)
>
> With a few configuration tweaks, the virtual environment can r/w "real" disk
> locations outside the environment, you can copy and paste (control-C/V) to
> and from apps inside and outside the virtual environment, and you can
> send/receive from your USB devices, such as printers, keyboards, mice.
>
> Two caveats: You'll need original XP disks to do the install; and so far
> there is no support for firewire devices.
>
> Overall a headache saver and in our case, we have a 25 year-old custom
> database that's impossible to run in Win7 but works just fine in Virtualbox.
> A HUGE time saver and business saver, actually -- we were unable to rewrite
> that db for a newer OS. And oh, btw, FM7.x runs nicely in that environment
> as well. :)