Hello Everyone,

I just have a couple of questions about using Windows XP in VirtualBox within Linux Mint (64 Bit).
I have a feeling I already know the answers to my own questions but I just want to make sure my

assumptions are correct.
Okay so Windows XP is 32 Bit which means that it is limited to under 4GB of RAM and when you run Linux

Mint 64 Bit you now have access to over 4GB of RAM. So my first question is.....

1.) When you load up Windows XP in VirtualBox within Linux Mint can you assign and or will it be able to

use more than 4GB of RAM within the VirtualBox session of Windows XP?

2.) Or is there some way to assign Windows XP 4GB of RAM and then also be able to assign a program being

run within this virtual session of Windows XP for example Photoshop more RAM as well?
So Windows XP will have 4GB of RAM assigned to it and Photoshop has say 4GB of RAM assigned to it as

well.

3.) My final question is about SSD (Solid State Drives). Windows XP does not really support SSD's but

Linux Mint does, now what happens if you install Linux Mint on a SSD and then you run Windows XP with

VirtualBox? Does Windows XP run and or save data improperly on that SSD?


I am open to any suggestions/information.

Thank You All In Advance

Hi,

1) and 2) are Windows XP questions that I don't know the answer to. 3) is a virtualisation question.
The guest OS does not have access to the physical harddrive. Instead the Virtualbox presents it with a virtual harddrive that just looks like a generic sata or ide device (not sure what is the default).

Evo2.

The answer to all three questions is: No. XP will still have a 4GB limit (actually about 3-3.5 GB), programs will have the same limits as on a native Windows installation, XP will have no problem with SSDs, since it writes into a container file which is handled by the host OS.

Hey guys thank you both for your responses
These were pretty much my assumptions, just wanted to make sure I could get some verified answers. I figured an SSD would work, but didn't know how it would be handled.

Thanks Again

In almost every practical sense, a virtual machine is a real machine. All limits tend to be there. So xp starter would be 512M and other 32 bit would be 4G total. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...its_windows_xp


Photoshop has a way to use scratch disks. It would have to be a drive or partition available to xp just as if it were a real computer. That could mean iscsi attached or even nfs/samba/cifs/ftp. So one could actually create a ram drive in mint, attach it as an iscsi, and then allow xp to use it as a scratch disk and in a fashion allow the xp client to have more ram available than normally in a MS 32 bit OS only for photoshop.

Kind of a long way around the deal.