XP in Virtual PC under Win 7 - a few questions

I have just bought a new laptop running Windows 7 Professional (32 bit) and
have installed XP in a virtual machine to cope with the odd applications[1]
which won't run in Win7.

One application which will only run in the virtual machine is Jaws PDF
Converter - which installs a pseudo printer driver and, when you 'print'
with it, a PDF file is produced. I would like to be able to share this
'printer' so that I can print to it from Win7 applications, but I haven't
yet succeeded in doing so. I can go into the printer setup menu on the
virtual machine and can tell it to share the printer, but I still can't see
the 'printer' from the Win7 side. Does anyone know whether this is possible
and, if so, how to do it?

If I can avoid it, I don't want to have to install all the applications from
which I may want to 'print' to PDF files on the virtual machine.

[The same would probably apply if I had a *real* printer whose driver only
worked in XP, and if I wanted to print to it from Win7.]

Another thing which seems odd to me - but perhaps it's to be expected - is
that although the Win7 system and the virtual machine share the same
physical network card, they've somehow acquired different IP addresses which
are not even in the same subnet. This seems to result in a strange
combination of what is and isn't visible to what when I try to ping the
physical and virtual machines from each other and from other computers in my
network. Anyone know what to expect here?

I would welcome comments from anyone who has managed to suss this virtual
machine business, and whose experience is more extensive than my two days'
worth.


[1] I've been agreeably surprised with what *will* run in Win7 - including a
number of old applications originally written for Win9x!
--
Cheers,
Roger
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On 19 May, 21:00, "Roger Mills" wrote:
> One application which will only run in the virtual machine is Jaws PDF
> Converter - which installs a pseudo printer driver and, when you 'print'
> with it, a PDF file is produced. I would like to be able to share this
> 'printer' so that I can print to it from Win7 applications, but I haven't
> yet succeeded in doing so.

Try another PDF 'printer' CutePDF seems popular

Owain

On 19/05/2010 21:00, Roger Mills wrote:
> I have just bought a new laptop running Windows 7 Professional (32 bit) and
> have installed XP in a virtual machine to cope with the odd applications[1]
> which won't run in Win7.
>
> One application which will only run in the virtual machine is Jaws PDF
> Converter - which installs a pseudo printer driver and, when you 'print'
> with it, a PDF file is produced. I would like to be able to share this
> 'printer' so that I can print to it from Win7 applications, but I haven't
> yet succeeded in doing so. I can go into the printer setup menu on the
> virtual machine and can tell it to share the printer, but I still can't see
> the 'printer' from the Win7 side. Does anyone know whether this is possible
> and, if so, how to do it?
>
> If I can avoid it, I don't want to have to install all the applications from
> which I may want to 'print' to PDF files on the virtual machine.
>
> [The same would probably apply if I had a *real* printer whose driver only
> worked in XP, and if I wanted to print to it from Win7.]
>
> Another thing which seems odd to me - but perhaps it's to be expected - is
> that although the Win7 system and the virtual machine share the same
> physical network card, they've somehow acquired different IP addresses which
> are not even in the same subnet.

At a guess, (I'm a VMWare geek) you need to set virtual hardware support
features in Windows 7 so that network services are 'bridged' to the
virtual network card in the XP guest, not 'NAT'ed'

Oh hang on, lets google 'bridge windows 7 virtual network'

<http://blogs.technet.com/windows_vpc/archive/2009/09/26/networking-and-using-windows-xp-mode.aspx>

--
Adrian C

In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Owain
<> wrote:
> On 19 May, 21:00, "Roger Mills" wrote:
>> One application which will only run in the virtual machine is Jaws
>> PDF Converter - which installs a pseudo printer driver and, when you
>> 'print' with it, a PDF file is produced. I would like to be able to
>> share this 'printer' so that I can print to it from Win7
>> applications, but I haven't yet succeeded in doing so.
>
> Try another PDF 'printer' CutePDF seems popular
>
> Owain

That's another possibility, of course! However, I like Jaws because it
handles security well (with control over whether the resulting PDF file can
be edited, printed, etc.) and it attaches itself to Word's file menu making
it very quick to turn a Word document into a PDF file. Having said that,
that last bit is unlikely to work if word is installed in Win7 and Jaws in
the virtual machine.
--
Cheers,
Roger
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On Wed, 19 May 2010 21:00:31 +0100, Roger Mills wrote:

> One application which will only run in the virtual machine is Jaws PDF
> Converter - which installs a pseudo printer driver and, when you 'print'
> with it, a PDF file is produced. I would like to be able to share this
> 'printer' so that I can print to it from Win7 applications, but I
> haven't yet succeeded in doing so.

Why not just install one of the many available .pdf "printers" that
will run under Win7? I'm sure there must be one that fits your
requirements re security, editing etc of the resultant file.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"Roger Mills" <> kirjoitti
viestissä:...
> Another thing which seems odd to me - but perhaps it's to be expected - is
> that although the Win7 system and the virtual machine share the same
> physical network card, they've somehow acquired different IP addresses
> which are not even in the same subnet. This seems to result in a strange
> combination of what is and isn't visible to what when I try to ping the
> physical and virtual machines from each other and from other computers in
> my network. Anyone know what to expect here?

Could it be that the virtual XP machine is actually set to use NAT? If
that's the case you could simply change the setting to the one with the
physical network card's name (the setting is in Virtual PC's network
settings). Then the physical computer and the virtual one would be like two
computers in the same network with IP addresses of the same subnet.


P.V.

On 19/05/2010 21:55, Roger Mills wrote:
> In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Owain
> <> wrote:
>> On 19 May, 21:00, "Roger Mills" wrote:
>>> One application which will only run in the virtual machine is Jaws
>>> PDF Converter - which installs a pseudo printer driver and, when you
>>> 'print' with it, a PDF file is produced. I would like to be able to
>>> share this 'printer' so that I can print to it from Win7
>>> applications, but I haven't yet succeeded in doing so.
>>
>> Try another PDF 'printer' CutePDF seems popular
>>
>> Owain
>
> That's another possibility, of course! However, I like Jaws because it
> handles security well (with control over whether the resulting PDF file can
> be edited, printed, etc.) and it attaches itself to Word's file menu making
> it very quick to turn a Word document into a PDF file. Having said that,
> that last bit is unlikely to work if word is installed in Win7 and Jaws in
> the virtual machine.

What about the gDoc products from the same company? Looks like Jaws will
not be made to run on W7. (I have no idea what the product is like.)

--
Rod

In an earlier contribution to this discussion, John Rumm
<> wrote:
> On 19/05/2010 21:00, Roger Mills wrote:
>
>> I have just bought a new laptop running Windows 7 Professional (32
>> bit) and have installed XP in a virtual machine to cope with the odd
>> applications[1] which won't run in Win7.
>
> Which virtual PC are you using? The one that comes with win7 (aka "XP
> Mode") or a bolt on like MS Virtual PC or Citrix?
>
I'm using (MS) Windows XP Mode in conjunction with Windows Virtual PC, both
of which I downloaded and installed by following instructions on the MS
site.

>> One application which will only run in the virtual machine is Jaws
>> PDF Converter - which installs a pseudo printer driver and, when you
>> 'print' with it, a PDF file is produced. I would like to be able to
>> share this 'printer' so that I can print to it from Win7
>> applications, but I haven't yet succeeded in doing so. I can go into
>> the printer setup menu on the virtual machine and can tell it to
>> share the printer, but I still can't see the 'printer' from the Win7
>> side. Does anyone know whether this is possible and, if so, how to
>> do it?
>
> Have you tried sharing it as a network printer? (that may be what you
> mean!)
Yes, that's what I've tried to do - and I've given it the name "Jaws". The
system has assigned the name "VirtualXP-41525" to the virtual machine. When
browsing for network printers on the Win7 system failed to find my shared
'printer', I entered it explicitly as \\VirtualXP-41525\Jaws - but it
*still* couldn't find it.

>> Another thing which seems odd to me - but perhaps it's to be
>> expected - is that although the Win7 system and the virtual machine
>> share the same physical network card, they've somehow acquired
>> different IP addresses which are not even in the same subnet. This
>> seems to result in a strange
>
> Which might explain difficulty seeing network resources shared on one
> machine from the other!
>
> Assuming they are both (i.e. win7 and the virtual pc) set to DHCP an
> address, they ought to grab an address from your DHCP server (usually
> your router).
>
> You can try an "ipconfig /renew" from a command line to force either
> to go back and get another.
>

Just done that, and it's come back with the same address as before.


> The other solution is to assign a fixed ip address to one or both
> machines. (ideally, tweak the range that the router can hand out to
> not include your static addresses).
>

I might resort to that, but I need to understand how it's *supposed* to
work - see below.

>
> If auto configuring they will typically grab consecutive addresses
> from the router (unless it is a clever one that remembers previous mac
> address to IP bindings).
>

I would have expected something like that, but that's not how it appears to
work! The address given to the virtual machine is *not* in the range which I
have allowed the router to dish out under DHCP - and is not even in the same
subnet. To be specific:

Router's own LAN IP: 192.168.1.110
Router's DHCP range: 192.168.1.80-90
Physical computer's IP: 192.168.1.81
Physical computer's Gateway: 192.168.1.110

all pretty much as I would expect.

*However*:
Virtual machine's IP: 192.168.131.65
Virtual machine's Gateway: 192.168.131.254

It's as though there is a virtual DHCP server which is dishing out addresses
from the 131 subnet instead of the 1 subnet to virtual machine(s)

Anyone seen anything like this?
--
Cheers,
Roger
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In message <ht1mt6$6jp$>, P.V. <>
writes
>"Roger Mills" <> kirjoitti
>viestissä:...
>> Another thing which seems odd to me - but perhaps it's to be expected
>>- is that although the Win7 system and the virtual machine share the
>>same physical network card, they've somehow acquired different IP
>>addresses which are not even in the same subnet. This seems to result
>>in a strange combination of what is and isn't visible to what when I
>>try to ping the physical and virtual machines from each other and
>>from other computers in my network. Anyone know what to expect here?
>
>Could it be that the virtual XP machine is actually set to use NAT? If
>that's the case you could simply change the setting to the one with the
>physical network card's name (the setting is in Virtual PC's network
>settings). Then the physical computer and the virtual one would be like
>two computers in the same network with IP addresses of the same subnet.

I've just had to do this for a friend and can confirm that you have to
set the network adapter in Tools to the same physical one as the
machine.
The Help files are utterly confusing.

I don't know about the pdf thing, I just use Open Office, but I had a
terrible time seeing the printer on my workgroup. It's an old Xerox P12
that has to use HP IIP drivers. You have to pretend the virtual XP has a
parallel port, then install the drivers, which only appear after you hit
Windows Update in the printer install menu. Then you have to remember
that they are I's not 1's and that IIP is later in the alphabet than
IIIP. Install as a parallel printer than let the virtual machine find
the networked printer and it will install the drivers. The remove the
phantom parallel printer.

All this might be obvious to others, but not to this old man.
--
Bill

In an earlier contribution to this discussion, Adrian C
<> wrote:
> On 19/05/2010 21:00, Roger Mills wrote:
>> I have just bought a new laptop running Windows 7 Professional (32
>> bit) and have installed XP in a virtual machine to cope with the odd
>> applications[1] which won't run in Win7.
>>
>> One application which will only run in the virtual machine is Jaws
>> PDF Converter - which installs a pseudo printer driver and, when you
>> 'print' with it, a PDF file is produced. I would like to be able to
>> share this 'printer' so that I can print to it from Win7
>> applications, but I haven't yet succeeded in doing so. I can go into
>> the printer setup menu on the virtual machine and can tell it to
>> share the printer, but I still can't see the 'printer' from the Win7
>> side. Does anyone know whether this is possible and, if so, how to
>> do it? If I can avoid it, I don't want to have to install all the
>> applications from which I may want to 'print' to PDF files on the
>> virtual machine. [The same would probably apply if I had a *real* printer
>> whose
>> driver only worked in XP, and if I wanted to print to it from Win7.]
>>
>> Another thing which seems odd to me - but perhaps it's to be
>> expected - is that although the Win7 system and the virtual machine
>> share the same physical network card, they've somehow acquired
>> different IP addresses which are not even in the same subnet.
>
> At a guess, (I'm a VMWare geek) you need to set virtual hardware
> support features in Windows 7 so that network services are 'bridged'
> to the virtual network card in the XP guest, not 'NAT'ed'
>
> Oh hang on, lets google 'bridge windows 7 virtual network'
>
> <http://blogs.technet.com/windows_vpc/archive/2009/09/26/networking-and-using-windows-xp-mode.aspx>

Thanks for that link - that's great. Having un-NAT'd the virtual machine, it
has now been given an IP address in the same subnet and range as the Win7
system, and I can now see the shared network
printer, and install it in the Win7 system.

The fact that it doesn't *work* is another story! On further investigation,
it doesn't work in the virtual machine either - I was so pleased that I got
it to install, that I didn't test it!!

Anyway, assuming I *can* get it to work in the virtual machine, it should
then work in Win7 also.
--
Cheers,
Roger
_______
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
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