Which VM to use?

I have an old application that I run on a 32 bit version of Win 10 Pro with NTVDM on an old laptop. There's a lot of olds there and they aren't getting younger. The laptop doesn't do Win updates anymore. It has failed to boot after the last several updates and it is rescued by Win 10s automatic fail to boot recovery and restore. I have blocked it from all further updates and I will use my router settings to block it from the internet.

I'm thinking it might be better to run a 32 bit Win 10 in a VM on my main machine. My main machine has enough resources and I can bump my memory from 32GB to 64 GB if I need. I can dedicate a physically separate NVMe drive to the task. I would love to just dual boot but my machine probably won't run a 32 bit Win 10 natively. My Computers specs are fully updated except for the extra memory and the extra drive. I'm running a UEFI based Win 11 Pro with Secure Boot.

Given all of the above it seems to me that running a VM is the way to go but which one? I have used Virtual Box a few years back but I have no experience with any other VMs. Any advice please?

If the need for 32-bit is only for a program I'd try in Win10 and also in Win11. Only restriction I've read about is Win11 is 64-bit but only for the OS, still can run 32-bit programs. Coincidentally I just plugged in a thumb drive with a 900+MB file dated late 2012 for installing Office 2010 x86, running it says it can't be installed. Haven't had any other issue with 32-bit on this Notebook. Office 2007 was the change to the file formats and Office 2010 was the first to be available as either 32-bit/x86 or 64-bit/x64.

As long as the 32bit application does not have a 32bit driver nor is a kernel mode application it should run just fine on a 64bit OS. This has been the case since Vista.

neemobeer said:

As long as the 32bit application does not have a 32bit driver nor is a kernel mode application it should run just fine on a 64bit OS. This has been the case since Vista.

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WinXP Pro had a 64-bit version [still have the CD] but as I recall there weren't many 64-bit programs or games available then.

Thanks guys but NTVDM is not an option on any 64 bit Windows machine. That knocks it out on Win 11 and 64 bit Win 10.

Why not just run it under a Generation 1 Hyper-V VM - already built into Windows 11?

NavyLCDR said:

Why not just run it under a Generation 1 Hyper-V VM - already built into Windows 11?

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That was my original question. I have experience (about 5 years back) with Virtual Box but no knowledge of Hyper-V and any others.

BobD said:

That was my original question. I have experience (about 5 years back) with Virtual Box but no knowledge of Hyper-V and any others.

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K. So turning the question into an answer - just use Hyper-V built into Windows 11 Pro. Use a Generation 1 VM.

BobD said:

That was my original question. I have experience (about 5 years back) with Virtual Box but no knowledge of Hyper-V and any others.

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Any of the current mainstream VM programs can run a 32 bit OS. For older legacy software and hardware HYPER-V is a bit more tricky and you need to have W10 or W11 PRO on your main machine as the Host. If you've experience of VBOX try it first.

With VM's if they don't work at first you can keep fiddling around without hosing up your running OS. (Usually !!!!).

However if it CAN work under HYPER-V then it's likely to run quite efficiently -- HYPER-V seems to have improved a lot since its inception. I think Ms have learned a lot from their disastrous effort that was the real dog with "XP Mode"on W7 -- although the "Unity mode" was a good idea -- i.e where the applications from the VM you want to use appear on the main desktop without you seeing the VM's own OS.

Unity mode may still be available with VMWare (both Workstation and Player)- not sure about VBOX.

Unity mode works on Windows 10 build 10130 and VMware workstation rel 11.1. (Got that up again from an old archive.) !! Not sure of later releases though of Windows and VMWare workstation builds. Running on Linux Host so it might not work on Windows Hosts.

I think it's called "Seamless mode" in VBOX. You will have to install vmware-tools or vbox additions on Windows guests or open-vm-tools on Linux guests.

Cheers
jimbo

BobD said:

That was my original question. I have experience (about 5 years back) with Virtual Box but no knowledge of Hyper-V and any others.

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See tutorial section and there are excellent tutorials to run Hyper-V.

cereberus said:

See tutorial section and there are excellent tutorials to run Hyper-V.

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Thanks, I'll have a look.

jimbo45 said:

Any of the current mainstream VM programs can run a 32 bit OS. For older legacy software and hardware HYPER-V is a bit more tricky and you need to have W10 or W11 PRO on your main machine as the Host. If you've experience of VBOX try it first.

With VM's if they don't work at first you can keep fiddling around without hosing up your running OS. (Usually !!!!).

However if it CAN work under HYPER-V then it's likely to run quite efficiently -- HYPER-V seems to have improved a lot since its inception. I think Ms have learned a lot from their disastrous effort that was the real dog with "XP Mode"on W7 -- although the "Unity mode" was a good idea -- i.e where the applications from the VM you want to use appear on the main desktop without you seeing the VM's own OS.

Unity mode may still be available with VMWare (both Workstation and Player)- not sure about VBOX.

Unity mode works on Windows 10 build 10130 and VMware workstation rel 11.1. (Got that up again from an old archive.) !! Not sure of later releases though of Windows and VMWare workstation builds. Running on Linux Host so it might not work on Windows Hosts.

I think it's called "Seamless mode" in VBOX. You will have to install vmware-tools or vbox additions on Windows guests or open-vm-tools on Linux guests.

Cheers
jimbo

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Jim, as said, I have tried VBox some time back. I was a bit underwhelmed with its lack of speed and the virtual display was a bit limited also. It might be different now as I have a far more modern and powerful machine. The previous mobo was dated about 10 years back, with spinning disks and it would have been on Win 10. I'm happy that you mentioned Hyper-V performance. It was one of my pending questions. So I'm likely heading for Hyper-V after I do a bit of reading.

BobD said:

Jim, as said, I have tried VBox some time back. I was a bit underwhelmed with its lack of speed and the virtual display was a bit limited also. It might be different now as I have a far more modern and powerful machine. The previous mobo was dated about 10 years back, with spinning disks and it would have been on Win 10. I'm happy that you mentioned Hyper-V performance. It was one of my pending questions. So I'm likely heading for Hyper-V after I do a bit of reading.

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Hi there

Assuming reasonable CPU, RAM and graphics (whether on Mobo or separate GPU) is a given on modern machines use the FASTEST possible disk subsystem you can get hold of for the VM's. SSD's or NvME's should be an automatic choice. Spinners are OK for file sharing and media streaming but temporary storage, applications, and the OS itself should be run from fast disks.

In over 30 -35 years of using Windows most performance problems I've experienced have been from poor Disk I/O systems. Even more so than lack of RAM (which when it occurs is pretty obvious) and CPU capability. I was always amazed when people spent a lot of money on machines (relatively more expensive then than now - relative to income etc) but stinted on hideously slow disks. !!!!

Cheers
jimbo

NavyLCDR said:

K. So turning the question into an answer - just use Hyper-V built into Windows 11 Pro. Use a Generation 1 VM.

View attachment 46312

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Thanks for the tip about Type 1 VM. That was spot on. I read that a Hyper_V type 2 VM will not run a 32bit Windows 10.

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

Assuming reasonable CPU, RAM and graphics (whether on Mobo or separate GPU) is a given on modern machines use the FASTEST possible disk subsystem you can get hold of for the VM's. SSD's or NvME's should be an automatic choice. Spinners are OK for file sharing and media streaming but temporary storage, applications, and the OS itself should be run from fast disks.

Cheers
jimbo

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I intend to use a dedicated NVMe disk and I currently have 32GB ram installed with the option to go to 64GB. I would like to avoid the increase in ram as I have read that installing 4 sticks may cause the ram to get a bit warm (ref. MSI) due to more difficult airflow. The processor is an i7-13700KF which has been peaking at 5.4GHz without OCing by me. Anyhow, I have finished for the night and I'll get back at it tomorrow.

BobD said:

I intend to use a dedicated NVMe disk and I currently have 32GB ram installed with the option to go to 64GB. I would like to avoid the increase in ram as I have read that installing 4 sticks may cause the ram to get a bit warm (ref. MSI) due to more difficult airflow. The processor is an i7-13700KF which has been peaking at 5.4GHz without OCing by me. Anyhow, I have finished for the night and I'll get back at it tomorrow.

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I'm running W2022 Server very fast as a 2GB RAM VM -- VM's these days only use the RAM allocated as max, otherwise they dynamically allocate and release it as required- and remember if running a 32 BIT VM the max RAM it can use is in any case for OS + applications is only 4GB max -- I suspect your VM will run happily in 1 GB RAM !!

I've several W11 VM's running -- none has more than 4GB RAM allocated and all seem to work just fine -- don't try too many at once though.

G'day (or G'nite) then !!!

Cheers
jimbo

BobD said:

I intend to use a dedicated NVMe disk and I currently have 32GB ram installed with the option to go to 64GB. I would like to avoid the increase in ram as I have read that installing 4 sticks may cause the ram to get a bit warm (ref. MSI) due to more difficult airflow. The processor is an i7-13700KF which has been peaking at 5.4GHz without OCing by me. Anyhow, I have finished for the night and I'll get back at it tomorrow.

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32 GB is more than enough space to run a virtual machine in Hyper-V. I only have 16GB and I can run 2 instances of Windows at same time as host.

You do need a gen 1 installation for 32bit. They can only use 4GB RAM, so you could run 4 instances and still have 16GB left for host.

When you install 32bit windows pro in Hyper-V, make sure you have the rdp server in guest on to use enhanced mode.

cereberus said:

32 GB is more than enough space to run a virtual machine in Hyper-V. I only have 16GB and I can run 2 instances of Windows at same time as host.

You do need a gen 1 installation for 32bit. They can only use 4GB RAM, so you could run 4 instances and still have 16GB left for host.

When you install 32bit windows pro in Hyper-V, make sure you have the rdp server in guest on to use enhanced mode.

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Depending on the VM's requirements you could probably run several more concurrently since memory these days even on type 1 is essentially dynamic and an application using almost 0% of CPU will be paged in and out very fast if another VM needs some RAM or even the HOST itself. On a 16GB machine I was able to run 3 W22K server instances, 2 Windows 11 instances, a Windows 10 one and an XP one -- 7 VM's concurrently The trick was though to have plenty of fast disk space with the host OS having its own dedicated disk space.

(Of course having 2 physical processors on board helps !!! but unless you are going bonkers with VM's lack of CPU power these days isn't usually an issue).

A lot here probably wouldn't "risk it" but these days disks are very reliable so my VM disk set up were 3 disks (SSD's) configured as a single RAID 0 Array for maximum speed with the Host OS on a dedicated separate Nvme.

Of course the disadvantage is that on any failure you lose the entire array - but these are "only VMs" and I've backup anyway. -- "Risk to reward" ratio -- the faster RAID 0 speed even on SSD's well worth it.

With that many VM's running concurrently another issue is usually the video -- you don't need the whole screen to be sent / read each time you switch to another VM. Sending the whole desktop GUI each time is a lot of extra traffic. If you can split up the video with dedicated video ports - that helps - and I'm looking to see if some sort of Unity mode would work on a Windows HYPER-V Host. -- Getting Linux apps to run in Unity mode on a Windows HOST seems "sort of " to work with XPRA but I havent as yet got it to work "The other way around".


Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Depending on the VM's requirements you could probably run several more concurrently since memory these days even on type 1 is essentially dynamic and an application using almost 0% of CPU will be paged in and out very fast if another VM needs some RAM or even the HOST itself. On a 16GB machine I was able to run 3 W22K server instances, 2 Windows 11 instances, a Windows 10 one and an XP one -- 7 VM's concurrently The trick was though to have plenty of fast disk space with the host OS having its own dedicated disk space.

(Of course having 2 physical processors on board helps !!! but unless you are going bonkers with VM's lack of CPU power these days isn't usually an issue).

A lot here probably wouldn't "risk it" but these days disks are very reliable so my VM disk set up were 3 disks (SSD's) configured as a single RAID 0 Array for maximum speed with the Host OS on a dedicated separate Nvme.

Of course the disadvantage is that on any failure you lose the entire array - but these are "only VMs" and I've backup anyway. -- "Risk to reward" ratio -- the faster RAID 0 speed even on SSD's well worth it.

With that many VM's running concurrently another issue is usually the video -- you don't need the whole screen to be sent / read each time you switch to another VM. Sending the whole desktop GUI each time is a lot of extra traffic. If you can split up the video with dedicated video ports - that helps - and I'm looking to see if some sort of Unity mode would work on a Windows HYPER-V Host. -- Getting Linux apps to run in Unity mode on a Windows HOST seems "sort of " to work with XPRA but I havent as yet got it to work "The other way around".


Cheers
jimbo

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I'm back. I had to do some socialising and I wasn't sure I would be back tonight.

My processing requirements are not very onerous. I have this 16 bit program (a calendar that originated back in the late 1980s on a Mac and then was converted to Win 3.1) and these days with us hitting 80 and the kids getting towards 60 there is not a lot of changes going on with birthdays etc. Updates are few and far between. I PDF print the calendar a year in advance and then move it to my real machine and print it month by month so the missus can stick a month's worth of birthdays and other junk on the fridge. While ever I do that I can justify almost any amount of spending on equipment. As you can see, this is a very important project for me. The threat of it all going titsup because of an old laptop was a huge problem. I might even convert the laptop back to Win 11 64 bit after I do the VM. It will probably work OK like that. That's another project.

I like my machines to run fast and I greatly appreciate the performance info you guys have contributed. My machine is just loafing along most of the time so a couple of VMs doing almost nothing probably won't hurt. Just for info, I have Windows 11 sitting on a dedicated Samsung 980 Pro NVme drive in a 210GB partition with about another 200GB sitting as spare on the same drive to allow for expansion. I hold data on another dedicated Samsung 980 and I have a spare NVMe drive somewhere which I will use for the VM image(s). This should keep things nice and tidy. My machine can physically mount 5 NVMe drives and a few SATA drives.

I'll do some more reading tomorrow and find my other drive. I'll probably get back in about 24 hours when the dust settles tomorrow night.

BobD said:

My processing requirements are not very onerous. I have this 16 bit program (a calendar that originated back in the late 1980s on a Mac and then was converted to Win 3.1) ... As you can see, this is a very important project for me. The threat of it all going titsup because of an old laptop was a huge problem. I might even convert the laptop back to Win 11 64 bit after I do the VM. It will probably work OK like that. That's another project.

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A 16 bit app will run in 32-bit Windows 10, and W10 will be supported until 14th October 2025. After that it will continue to work, but you may want to avoid connecting to the internet as W10 will get no further security updates. For your purposes it would seem that internet connectivity is not a requirement, so it should be safe to stay offline and continue using W10.

You don't actually need a VM to be able to run another OS, you could have an laptop set aside with 32 bit W10 installed, or could dual-boot on your main machine.

One simple way to dual boot that does not affect the set up of your currently installed OS is to native boot a .vhdx file.