Setting up Win10 as a virtual machine on win11

Having installed win11 on my desktop I find:-
(a) My trusty HP scanner cannot be installed
(b) The version of my accounting software I have will not install

The scanner is perfectly good and reliable and the software does exactly what I need.
(I wish developers thought more about users).



The solution has to be a virtual win10 machine.

I have some questions
1. My CPU is a 4-core I5 7500T @ 2.70GHz RAM 8GB
2. I allocated 1 core - there is only one VM so "Resource Control" isn't an issue (I think)
3. Memory: I allocated 4096 on a dynamic basis 512 / 4096 - Task Manager on the Win11 machine shows many peaks at 100 (or near) percent.
4. The VHDx disk is dynamic starting at 256

The machine runs but maybe I can tweak these settings? It is slow to open (long wait) but once running is OK
In Hyper-V manager the CPU usage is always 0% - This may only be an approximate indication but it is helpful to see the effect of changes made.

Hope someone can guide /advise me please.

STOP PRESS: Although yesterday the VM ran - today it is reporting not enough memory! Yikes!!!

First, welcome to ElevenForum!

Could you tell me the model of the scanner in question? I'm a little surprised that if it is working in Win 10 it would not work in 11. I'd like to try my hand at a little research.

As for the VM, assign a minimum of 2 cores although I would suggest all 4 cores.

Another alternative would be to configure a "native boot VHD" so that no virtualization is needed but we can discuss that more if it comes down to it and nothing else works.

The only big hinderance that I see is if you accounting software is not working. Could you tell me the name and version number of that as well?

Also, what kind of errors do you get when trying to install both the accounting software or the scanner drivers?

Hi and thanks for replying.
The Scanner is an HP Scanjet 200 (pre-historic I know but (a) it has a small footprint and (b) it has been super reliable! It worked a treat with win10 - the HP site says it has been retired... and there are no drivers for win11 (unless I've misread of course).
As for the software it is QuickBooks Pro and is AGES old but it is what the accountants use.
As for QB - it installed successfully but then a complicated message came up about some fundamental incompatibility and I am afraid my brain shut down!
Thanks for tip re the cores.
The reason for going down the VM route is that, believe it or not, I set up a Fujitsu server with 4 VMs in it for my little business (when I had one) everything worked perfectly but I must have lost the touch.
All the best,

Trying to access external devices from a vm can be fraught with difficulties, particularly drivers, usb passthrough etc.

A better (and imo easier) solution as mentioned earlier is to install windows 10 as a dual boot option in a native booted virtual hard drive.

jeanrouge said:

As for the software it is QuickBooks Pro and is AGES old but it is what the accountants use.
As for QB - it installed successfully but then a complicated message came up about some fundamental incompatibility and I am afraid my brain shut down!

Click to expand...

Why not upgrade to a current version of QB? Intuit QuickBooks Online - QuickBooks You might be pleased with some of the new functionality.

Another vote here for dual booting vs. virtual machine. You really don't have enough processor or RAM to run a VM effectively and have you tried using the scanner with the VM yet?

The drivers of windows 10, are for my understanding the same for 11. Just install the 10driver on 11.
And with that old scanner, can't you use win7 with the software in vm. Uses less resources.

hsehestedt said:

Could you tell me the model of the scanner in question? I'm a little surprised that if it is working in Win 10 it would not work in 11. I'd like to try my hand at a little research.

Click to expand...

I had the same type of issue a long time ago. My old scanner would only work on winxp, not win7, so I had to keep a winxp pc around for a while. Now I use a camera instead of a scanner.

Thanks to everyone who replied - really appreciated.
(1) I decided to let the system create a VM to see how it allocate memory / CPU: 2 core and 4096 dynamic 512 / 1048576 (that floored me) but after rebooting all worked.
(2) The CPU usage still reported 0% which is just plain odd....
(3) The network works fine I can ping to the exterior but (of course) the win11 system page reports I am not connected!
(4) The choice of QB is not up to me. I was very happy with an ancient SAGE LINE 50 but the accountants insisted I move to QB a while ago - I have to keep the same version as they do; I've warned them that it doesn't install cleanly in win11 - I'll have to wait for them.
(5) The scanner installation stopped reporting "no USB hardware" - I adjusted policies using gpedit.msc to allow remote access to resources but it didn't really work....

After all this trouble I think I will revert to win10 and too bad for the consequences; it is at times like this that I wish I could revert to XPPro SP3 but I threw the disk away only a few weeks ago!

Thank you all again and see you in another life!

Jean Rouge

jeanrouge said:

Thanks to everyone who replied - really appreciated.
(1) I decided to let the system create a VM to see how it allocate memory / CPU: 2 core and 4096 dynamic 512 / 1048576 (that floored me) but after rebooting all worked.
(2) The CPU usage still reported 0% which is just plain odd....
(3) The network works fine I can ping to the exterior but (of course) the win11 system page reports I am not connected!
(4) The choice of QB is not up to me. I was very happy with an ancient SAGE LINE 50 but the accountants insisted I move to QB a while ago - I have to keep the same version as they do; I've warned them that it doesn't install cleanly in win11 - I'll have to wait for them.
(5) The scanner installation stopped reporting "no USB hardware" - I adjusted policies using gpedit.msc to allow remote access to resources but it didn't really work....

After all this trouble I think I will revert to win10 and too bad for the consequences; it is at times like this that I wish I could revert to XPPro SP3 but I threw the disk away only a few weeks ago!

Thank you all again and see you in another life!

Jean Rouge

Click to expand...

I do not think you get it. Installing W10 in a native boot virtual hars drive gives you the best of both worlds. No need to wipe W11 unless storage is a serious issue.

Some advantages to a native VHD boot:

1) That installation of Windows will have full access to the hardware including any peripherals. If the main installation on the system can access it, so can the native boot installation.

2) Speed - The Native Boot VHD has no virtualization so it can access hardware at full speed.

3) Activation - If you have an activated copy of Windows on your machine (or had one installed previously), then the native boot installation will also be automatically activated on that machine.

4) Access to the entire amount of RAM available on the system and no sharing of CPU or other resources. Since this run on the bare metal and does not share resources with another copy of Windows, it will have access to the full amount of memory, the full power of the CPU, etc.

5) If you ever want to remove it, this can be done in under 60 seconds. Simply remove it from the list of bootable OSes in MSCONFIG and set the default OS to not be that installation and then delete the VHD file (just a single file).

If you simply prefer to use a VM, that is up to you. We simply wanted to make you aware of the available options.

Hi I didn’t intend to be offhand - it is just that I have been struggling for a few days!!

Of course I’d love to try to use your suggestion. I misunderstood thinking you were suggesting a dual boot system.

Can you please point me to an appropriate resource so I can follow the steps?

Thanks

jeanrouge said:

Hi I didn’t intend to be offhand - it is just that I have been struggling for a few days!!

Of course I’d love to try to use your suggestion. I misunderstood thinking you were suggesting a dual boot system.

Can you please point me to an appropriate resource so I can follow the steps?

Thanks

Click to expand...

Apologies for the slow response. Hopefully the info that NavyLCDR provided will help.

BTW, there was no issue at all with your responses! We are all just trying to help each other out here and often times there are multiple ways to accomplish a task and it sometimes just comes down to a matter of preference.

Let us know how everything works out for you.

jeanrouge said:

Hi and thanks for replying.
The Scanner is an HP Scanjet 200 (pre-historic I know but (a) it has a small footprint and (b) it has been super reliable! It worked a treat with win10 - the HP site says it has been retired... and there are no drivers for win11 (unless I've misread of course).
As for the software it is QuickBooks Pro and is AGES old but it is what the accountants use.
As for QB - it installed successfully but then a complicated message came up about some fundamental incompatibility and I am afraid my brain shut down!
Thanks for tip re the cores.
The reason for going down the VM route is that, believe it or not, I set up a Fujitsu server with 4 VMs in it for my little business (when I had one) everything worked perfectly but I must have lost the touch.
All the best,

Click to expand...

for the scanner please try this. i got the information about this from the HP web site.

for QuickBooks have you tried re-installing using compatibility mode Windows 7.

best of luck, Steve ..

jeanrouge said:

Having installed win11 on my desktop I find:-
(a) My trusty HP scanner cannot be installed
(b) The version of my accounting software I have will not install

The scanner is perfectly good and reliable and the software does exactly what I need.
(I wish developers thought more about users).



The solution has to be a virtual win10 machine.

I have some questions
1. My CPU is a 4-core I5 7500T @ 2.70GHz RAM 8GB
2. I allocated 1 core - there is only one VM so "Resource Control" isn't an issue (I think)
3. Memory: I allocated 4096 on a dynamic basis 512 / 4096 - Task Manager on the Win11 machine shows many peaks at 100 (or near) percent.
4. The VHDx disk is dynamic starting at 256

The machine runs but maybe I can tweak these settings? It is slow to open (long wait) but once running is OK
In Hyper-V manager the CPU usage is always 0% - This may only be an approximate indication but it is helpful to see the effect of changes made.

Hope someone can guide /advise me please.

Click to expand...

Although paid software you might find VUESCAN will support your scanner -- supports zillions of old models -- while Ilike and use VM's - the VUESCAN option might be simpler if that's the only thing you need.


If you do decide the VM route then give the VM 4 virtual CPU's not just one. 4GB RAM should be plenty for W10 -- or if using W7 2GB is more than enough.

HYPER-V is very efficient but try and install the Virtual hard drive on a different disk to the one your Host OS is running on -- certainly better if on an SSD / NMVE device in any case. Don't over allocate the disk storage size either for the VM.



Cheers
jimbo

Hi Guys, Thanks for the advice and help. First things first; I have increased the memory so thank you to NavyLCDR for the remark. It has made a huge difference.
Secondly; I'm in a bit of a bind as I need my desktop machine so what I intend to do (actually have already done) is to revert to Win10 on it and then experiment with the VHD option on another machine. I'm already a week late with correspondence!

Incidentally I had a hellish time trying to reinstall Win10 and ended up wiping the disk and reformatting it before it would play. Otherwise it kept on booting into win11

I am not a free agent insofar as QB is concerned because the version to be used is defined by the Accountants. I've actually warned them of the potential difficulties but so far they haven't responded. I did install it under XPPro SP2 which is what the compatibility manager recommended - still didn't work. Under win10 it works quite happily once again under XPPro SP2.

The VHD option sequence of operations is very comprehensive but there are many steps to take and I prefer to take it easy and avoid rushed mistakes...

Thanks also for the research on the HP Scanner; It is happy under win10 (physical) but under win10 (Virtual) I couldn't get passthrough for the USB port to run.

Just to get it straight in my head: I set up win11 as normal on my test machine.
All my drives are SSD by the way...
I run up Hyper-V and create a win10 VHD.
I then follow the recommended procedures by copying across the VHD to the target machine.
At the end I will have (I should have) a machine running either win10 (Virtual) or win11 (physical)
Obviously enough this will be a dual boot configuration.
To move from one to the other I will have to reboot each time.
If on the other hand I use Hyper-V and figure out how to organise USB passthrough I can use the scanner and the QB program simultaneously with the host machine.