Windows 11

cleo43 wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:

Older Peripheral hardware that worked well with XP/7/8 no longer works well, works partially or randomly or not at all..

I run XP inside VirtualBox to solve all these problems. It's criminal to dump all these perfectly running hardwares to eWaste.

Virtual box or any VM in theory can allow one to continue to use older software by creating an artificial PC environment (emulates processors, memory and other internal PC hardware which are compatible with an older OS like XP or even DOS).

However, VMs are not perfect, come at a cost of drive space, memory and processor speed and you still run into the issue with your "Host" OS that must be able to recognize, install the proper drivers for old peripherals like printers and scanners.

Wasn't such a problem running VMs under say a Win7 Host, but with Win10 getting drivers for legacy peripherals to install and stay working is the biggest issue.

If the host can't see the device, neither will your VM see those items as a "Guest". For those who may not understand, to run a virtual environment you start with a "host PC", the Host is your base that runs directly from your PCs hardware and the virtual environment becomes a "Guest" of the Host.. Your Host must have enough memory, processor and hard drive space to run both the Host and "share" the actual hardware with the Guest..

I do keep my options open, I buy Win Pro versions which give you the option of using MS VMs at no extra cost which does make spinning up a VM fairly easy to do.. Have even spun up Win2016 server on a Win10 Pro host for the fun of it..

VMs do have a neat feature, the entire VM with all of the programs and data are all packaged into one file.. Make a backup copy of that file and if your VM gets a virus, you can delete the file and restore from the backup copy and your off to the races again.. The virus will be contained within the VM unless you have enabled some sort of file sharing between Host and Guest..