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I have installed virtual pc to run XP inside of windows 7 professional. When I run "dxdiag" and go to the display tab on 7 I can see my graphics card details (ATI Radeon etc) but when I run it in the XP mode it says N/A and doesn't support anything that my graphics card does such as directdraw, direct3d etc.

Is there a way to get XP to run off my graphics card as I have a game I want to play that only runs in XP and requires direct3d (or maybe some other software?).


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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

On the game, as a long shot you can check for updates and/or try to find out if anyone else has got it to work - there are some pretty inventive people out there and you may be surprised.

Apart from that, Virtual PC is not really that good at graphics. You can try VMWare Workstation which has much much better 3D support, and if you choose not to buy it, simply use VMWare Player when the trial is over.

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Thanks Wil, why do I need to use workstation then player if player is free? Can I not just install player and go? –  fire Jul 18 '10 at 10:29
Of course you can. VMWare enabled creating guests in Player also just recently. –  Shiki Jul 18 '10 at 11:57
Simply put, VMWare Player works well and is free - but, VMWare Workstation is like the enterprise version - so many extra features and just brilliant. Not needed but if you have never used it, I would always recommend it... but the main reason was I didn't know that Vmware Player let you create them +1 to @Shiki –  William Hilsum Jul 18 '10 at 14:14
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There is no way. VMWare supports 3D inside VMs, almost perfectly. It's close to perfect. VirtualBox also supports it, actually its a Wine hack/ripoff, and it's the worst. It's really just for show-off and it's considered to be an experimental feature (it won't let you install it that easily.)

Request a 30day trial from VMWare or get the VMWare player, that also supports it as far as I know.

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»it won't let you install it that easily« – takes a single checkbox to enable here. –  Јοеу Jul 18 '10 at 11:10
Well. And you have to boot into Recovery mode, etc etc to get proper acceleration set up. It is not that straightforward NOR supported NOR really working. –  Shiki Jul 18 '10 at 11:53
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WinXP mode emulates an old crappy graphic card. It is a better option to innstall a real WinXP version in addition to windows7.

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