Windows Virtual PC and VirtualBox on the same PC

virtual-machinesvirtualboxvirtualizationwindows 7

I am running Windows 7 Professional x64. Presently I am using Windows Virtual PC. I'd like to try VirtualBox. Can both virtualization platforms be installed and run on the same instance of Windows? Does anyone have an experience in this?

Best Answer

I have both installed on my win 7 (64 bit) machine.

However, you should not run both VMs at the same time.

  • VirtualBox is smart and will not allow you to run it if another visualisation process is running.
  • I have run both side by side - by starting VirtualBox first - but I would not recommend it (It is very likely that you will end up having one or the other VM crash).

A useful tip: you might need to actually kill the VirtualPC process, vpc.exe, (as opposed to simply shutting down all its VMs) in order to get a VirtualBox VM to start.

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