If you remember in a previous article I wrote about Virtual PC,
Panther, Microsoft, and Missing Virtual PC
Updates, my neighbor was having difficulty running Virtual PC
5.0 on her G4 tower with Mac OS 10.3 - but it was running fine on
my PowerBook with the same OS.
The only solution seemed to be to upgrade to Virtual PC 6,
even though she didn't particularly want to. The issue at hand was
whether it would recognize the drive image that we already had set
up but was nonfunctional in the state the machine was currently in.
If that wasn't the case, she thought it would make more sense to
buy a secondhand PC.
Since I very rarely use Virtual PC on my PowerBook, I'd never
found any problems with it. Yes, it's slow compared to a real PC,
but not intolerable. I had version 5.0 running Windows 98
(4.0.1998), and it had worked fine on 10.1 and 10.2, and it seemed
to work fine on 10.3.
That is, of course, until I actually tried to do something with
it. I opened it up in order to visit a site that wasn't displaying
properly with any Mac browser, the Windows 98 screen appeared, and
it sat there. And it sat there for a bit longer.
After about 5 minutes, when I was just about to give up, the
Windows 98 desktop started loading. What I didn't understand was
how it seemed to work just a couple weeks earlier but was suddenly
exhibiting the same issues that my neighbor's machine had been
having.
I was debating whether or not to upgrade to version 6, and I
decided that I might as well go for it. After installing Virtual
PC 6, I expected it to pretty much work as-is. No go. I'd
launch an app, and it would do its thing for a bit, and then it
would quit without giving me an error of any sort.
I figured that meant I had to download the Microsoft 6.1 update,
which, thankfully fixed it.
I booted Windows 98, and it asked me if I wanted to update the
additions, which actually updated very quickly and without a
problem. Finally, after all that, it was working just as it had a
few weeks ago.
It seems like it takes too much just to make software work the
way it should these days. What's on the CD that you buy isn't
compatible (although I believe you can buy 6.1 directly now) - you
have to download an update before you can actually use it.
As for my neighbor, she decided that she'd be best served by
buying a PC laptop that she could bring to work as well as use for
the one specific Windows application she had wanted to run at home.
She decided to purchase a used Dell, since they tend to be
inexpensive. Running Windows 98, she was able to get her software
set up and just connected it to a printer.
It's not quite as seamless as Virtual PC, but it's a lot faster
and a bit more compatible, too (at least until you start dealing
with installing Windows drivers).
