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up vote 7 down vote favorite

I've tried Virtual PC 2007, Sun VirtualBox, and VMWare Workstation, and there's always one problem or another. Does anyone know if this is even possible, and if so, what virtual machine supports it?

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What are the problems that you encountered? – Randell Sep 23 '09 at 9:40
The virtual GPUs simply don't support it due to driver issues, an inability to run the Windows performance index, or similar problems. I finally just gave up on running Aero in a VM and loaded Win7 in Boot Camp, where it works fine. – Gertbert Sep 24 '09 at 18:18
I think you are looking for a hypervisor that will run Windows 7 with Aero. – MDMarra Jul 7 '10 at 1:11

7 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

VMWare Workstation 7 supports aero in Vista and 7.

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Thanks. I was hoping for something right away but I'll keep an eye out for the new release. – Gertbert Sep 24 '09 at 18:15
up vote 2 down vote

Paralles runs Windows 7 with aero enabled(Experimental support). And it costs 80$, not bad.

Check Windows 7 migration solution from Paralles.

http: // www. parallels. com/products/ xptowin7migration /

( I can't post links and replies in SU i don't know why. @_@ after posting reply it goes down so i added space to URL to preserve EDIT)

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Tried this yeasterday in Parallels 4 and it unfortunately didn't work. – Gertbert Sep 24 '09 at 18:14
why is the link broken like this? – hasen j Sep 24 '09 at 19:29
up vote 1 down vote

I believe Hyper-V runs Windows 7 with Aero.

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up vote 1 down vote

While it might not be directly possible, it can be overcome. If you run Windows Vista as a host, you can open RDP connection to the VM, and enable Aero. The latest version of RDP for Vista (which is required since it is Aero-enabled) should support Aero over RDP.

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up vote 0 down vote

Nothing yet, although the latest Virtual Box's Virtual Additions include experimental DirectX support and Aero may therefore be supported soon.

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up vote 0 down vote

I know from experience that VMware Player supports Aero, and does it quite well on my machine (which has no hardware-accelerated virtualization support). All you have to do is install VMware Tools inside the guest OS, then change the theme from Basic to Aero manually.

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up vote 0 down vote

Both VMWare 3.x and Parallels 5.x support Windows 7 With Full Aero experience. Which one does it better will depend on a different number of factors. I suggest you try both “trials” and see what suits you best. In any case, always install fresh machines and remember to install the tools for each. Migration from one VM to another works, but doesn’t achieve the best performance.

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