VMworld
1 Replies Last post: Nov 30, 2007 9:40 AM by dansolo  
Click to view palgam0's profile Candidate 1 posts since
Nov 30, 2007

Nov 30, 2007 7:52 AM

VMware support for Vista on Dell D830


I've just received delivery of a new Dell D830 with the intent of working with Vista and specifically the higher level features such as Aeroglass for one of our products. For that reason I selected the highest graphics card namely Quadro NVS 140M 512Mb. My Company support policy requires Microsoft XP, and I realize that this appears to contradict my original statement above but regardless I was forced to install XP and attempt to use Vista via VMWare. So far the machine is excellent and Vista appears to work perfectly well inside of VM workstation 6 except.....you guessed it I can not get it to recognize or use the graphics card so my available Vista features is limited to the base or level 1. Tried loading the drivers/chipset for Vista from Dell site with no luck. All of them on install refuse to continue complaining that it cannot identify/find the required hardware. I've made sure that VMware is set to use the host settings but it still comes up in SVGA even though the display is in fact WUSVGA. Of course the issue could be with Dell so I'm in process of asking them the same question but regardless I'd like to know if anyone is having similar issues and more importantly is there a solution
Click to view dansolo's profile Candidate 6 posts since
Sep 10, 2007
1. Nov 30, 2007 9:40 AM in response to: palgam0
Re: VMware support for Vista on Dell D830

The premise and power of VMWare is the hardware virtualization. This means motherboard, hard drives, RAM, NICs, video cards, etc are all software representations which are then mapped to the appropriate device. The advantage to this is that your VMs will not see any changes in hardware even if you move them from one host to another. But it also means that you will not be able to tie your VM directly to your particular video card.


VMWare workstation 5 supported direct3D as an "experimental" technology http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_vidsound_d3d.html and at a VMWorld session i was in (can't remember which, unfortunately) they indicated that tey are still working to increase the virtual videocard performance. Soooo there may be aero support coming, but as far as I can tell, it is not here today.

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