Setting Up a Virtual PC

Have you ever wanted to test some software on your computer without the risk of messing anything up? This is a pretty common thing to do. There is a lot of software on the internet advertised to do things like anti-virus, anti-spyware, registery optimization, and other system level tasks. This is not the kind of software you would want to test on your primary computer because if something went wrong, it could mess up your PC. Many people have had the experience of testing a registry optimizer, for example, and find that it totally destroys their installation of Windows. The only solution, then, is to re-install. And testing spyware or virus fighting applications usually entails purposely infecting a PC with various malware and seeing how effective the utility is at detection and removal. You might have wondered how various tech sites and magazines test such software. Surely you don’t think their infecting their office PCs.

Of course, one way to go about this is to set up a sacrificial computer. Now, in my case, I have a few computers around my office which are of no production value to me. So, I could easily set up Windows on one of these computers and test away. If that computer totally gets destroyed (software-wise, of course), then I just format the drive and start over again. This is certainly one way to go about it, but not everybody has spare computers sitting around. Additionally, it is often a bit of an inconvenience to have to set up a second PC.

The other, more convenient option, is to set up what is called a "virtual machine". A virtual machine is essentially an artificial computer environment, operated completely by software. What it does is provides a layer of abstraction between your arftificial computing environment and the actual hardware of your computer. What does this mean to you and I? It means that, through a piece of software which you install like any other program, you can set up a "fake" computer environment which runs as if it were an entirely different computer. In other words, its a computer inside a computer. What kinds of things can you do with this?

• Set up a copy of Windows on your computer which you can totally destroy, yet cause no damage at all to your working installation of Windows.
• Set up a copy of Linux on your Windows machine and simply operate Linux in a window.
• Set up virtual machines running on older operating systems such as MS-DOS or early editions of Windows.
• Create an environment where you can test software which could potentially mess with your system (i.e. Internet Explorer 7).

The concept is very useful, and suprisingly easy. And, I might add, you can do it without spending a dime. Read on.

Your Options

There are a lot of different options available for setting up virtual machines on your computer. I will direct you over to Wikipedia for a more thorough list of all of your options. Most of PCMech’s readers, however, are using Windows. There are two popular options I will bring to your attention (although there are numerous others available):

• VMWare
• Microsoft Virtual PC