What is a good Virtual Machine (VM) for a 64 bit WIndows 7 client

Question

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit and want to run a 64 bit Virtual Machine (VM) as well

It looks like the VPC only support 32 bit guest clients. Does anyone have real world experience with a 64 bit guest?

Answer 1

You want VirtualBox-ose from Oracle. It's free (the OSE means Open Source Edition), and does 64 bit as long as your host CPU and operating system are both 64 bit. (Apparantly since version 3.2 you can actually run a 64 bit guest on a 32 bit host as long as you have a 64 bit CPU and you only allocate 1 cpu to the guest. I have yet to prove this to myself yet.)

Answer 2

isn't that simple, more requirements are needed by the host. I know because i have an x64 cpu but i don't pass the following requirement. Extracted from the help file of vbox:

VirtualBox supports 64-bit guest operating systems, even on 32-bit host operating systems,[10] provided that the following conditions are met:

You need a 64-bit processor with hardware virtualization support (see Section 10.3, “Hardware vs. software virtualization”).

You must enable hardware virtualization for the particular VM for which you want 64-bit support; software virtualization is not supported for 64-bit VMs.

If you want to use 64-bit guest support on a 32-bit host operating system, you must also select a 64-bit operating system for the particular VM. Since supporting 64 bits on 32-bit hosts incurs additional overhead, VirtualBox only enables this support upon explicit request.

On 64-bit hosts (which typically come with hardware virtualization support), 64-bit guest operating systems are always supported regardless of settings, so you can simply install a 64-bit operating system in the guest.

Warning On any host, you should enable the I/O APIC for virtual machines that you intend to use in 64-bit mode. This is especially true for 64-bit Windows VMs. See Section 3.3.2, “"Advanced" tab”. In addition, for 64-bit Windows guests, you should make sure that the VM uses the Intel networking device, since there is no 64-bit driver support for the AMD PCNet card; see Section 6.1, “Virtual networking hardware”.

If you use the "Create VM" wizard of the VirtualBox graphical user interface (see Section 1.7, “Creating your first virtual machine”), VirtualBox will automatically use the correct settings for each selected 64-bit operating system type.

good luck.