Windows 10: Run a VM win10 for gaming?

Is there a way to run win10 for gaming in a VM? I almsot want to run win10 VM in win7 or 8.1 or a sparsely updated win10...

:)

 

Can upgrade VMWare guest? And some supplementary questions

My question was less concerned with the technical issues (though your answer does kind of implicitly answer my 1 and 2); I expect to be able to do it as long as activation issues don't get in the way.

My biggest question really is about activation: Would accepting the upgrade and installing it also deactivate my existing win7 so I couldn't use that any more? And the point about it all being VMs run non-concurrently on the same host, is whether that makes
a difference to the answer. It's more a licensing/activation rather than a technical issue, and I'm not planning to end up with two physical PCs running Windows (or in fact even one, natively).

ie: Whether to do this process:

1: Make a backup of my win7-32 vm

2: Reinstall win7-64 over it (because it's an upgrade media may be simpler wrt activation than creating a new one, but do it in that VM even though probably to new virtual disk)

3: When available, upgrade that to win10-64 bit by usual method

4: But also still be able to restore my backed-up win7-32 and carry on using it.

Or:

1: Make a backup of my win7-32 vm

2: When available upgrade that to win10-32 by usual method.

3: Possible then to download win10-64 install image? and

4: Use that to install new win10-64 VM & discard win10-32 VM.

5: But also still be able to restore my backed-up win7-32 and carry on using it.

Or possibly a more streamlined version of the second where it's not actually necessary to install an unwanted win10-32? ie:

1: When available accept win10 upgrade, but just download win10-64 install image, don't run in-situ upgrade.

2: Install that to new VM, carry on using my existing win7-32 VM. No need for them to ever run concurrently.

 

Onedrive Crashing

Exact problem here.... it occurred in my Win10 VM (running on Mac) about a week or two ago....

 

Sure but a better way is to install windows 10 in a virtual hard drive.

 

Well I'd like the OS in a VM so when ti crashes it dose not really screw things up very badly. At least a vm should be a bit more patchable/fixable than win10.

 

Hi there

main problem with using a VM for gaming will be the graphics -- you'll need to ensure that the VM runs graphics as near in Native mode as possible - and has GPU acceleration / 3D etc etc.

You won't be able to do that properly with VMWARE workstation / Player or VBOX.

You'll either have to try using HYPER-V and enable passthru on the graphics card -- not as easy to do if you don't know VM's -- and HYPER-V doesn't have decent USB facilities if you need those too.

If you really want to run this type of VM you really need to look at something like VMware's ESXI -- that will work a treat but it's a bit picky to set up and needs exactly the right hardware (especially the Network interface cards) or it will fail.

VM's can run things like photoshop, video editing, video playback etc these days - but serious gaming is another proposition where you will need to be able to access the hardware directly (GPU, CPU, Graphics particularly) or the experience will be a bit of a flop. Typical VM's used for software development / application testing etc such as used by VMWARE player / workstation or VBOX isolate the hardware quite a lot and tend to rely on a Virtual Bios.

If you are technically more interested read further on the differences between full and Paravirtualisation.

This should get you started -- light "Bed time Reading" !!

operating system - What is the difference between Full, Para and Hardware assisted virtualiazation.? - Stack Overflow

Cheers
jimbo

 

Yep! This is the much better choice.

If your worried about crashing or "screwing things up" make regular disk images, specifically before any Windows cumulative updates and version upgrades, or driver updates.

The thing about using a VM for gaming is, latency.
Even with my high powered machine, using an M.2 PCIe SSD for a system drive, and a Samsung 1TB 850 EVO for my Hyper-V virtual machines, I have noticed I still have some slight latency sometimes if my HOST and VM have a lot going on in the background, and I give all my VMs 8 virtual processors and 8GB of RAM! It boots faster than a bare metal machine(as a lot of the services are vampired off from the HOST), but when I have both busy, opening & running somethings can take a second to "click", in gaming I'm sure that is a deal killer.

So like @cereberus said, go with a VHD native boot.

See this tutorial from @Hyper-V - Native Boot VHD - Windows 10 Tutorials

 

Hi there
Native VHD boot is also a good idea but remember I think the OP wanted to retain W7 as host.

Problem with a Native VHD boot is that you can't concurrently access the host -- so if you want to do this why not go the whole hog and simply DUAL BOOT the machine anyway.

Gaming doesn't of itself require really fast I/O but will want to squeeze every last piece of assistance from the GPU / Graphics. This is where these things like VHD's fail compared to running "bare metal".

The latency will be due to the Graphics performance on your machine as far as I can see rather than CPU / SSD combo - your CPU should also allow hyperthreading -- a lot of standard INTEL CPU's don't always have this feature.

The VM also needs to be able to access the CPU directly too for maximum performance - using a VHD is a bit of a cludge IMO. Once you start "Virtualising" the processor you are losing performance here which will be noticed on some games.

Personally if I were a serious Gamer (I'm not though) I'd have a 100% dedicated machine specifically designed for that purpose.

Remember also whether using a VHD or not each Windows machine needs a Licence.
Also you'll need W10 PRO to use HYPER-V.

Cheers
jimbo

 

I don't mind w7-w10 as host OS, I just wind up reinstalling windose 6 times a year or so due to random crashing(it only takes one time to mess it up correctly even its its 2 or 4 times a year) or updates(this has seems every few win10 update is the kiss of death or breaks a part of windose you need for daily operation) or just other random crap that happens. It all piles up to force me to reinstall.

I pretty much run this every time I think its acting funny or on hard reboots but I still need a better way to verify files,ect....



@ECHO OFF

TIMEOUT /T 5 /NOBREAK

sfc /scannow

TIMEOUT /T 5 /NOBREAK


DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth


pause

 

Main reason to use a vhd is that it does not mess around with existing partitions, no need to create new ones, resize old ones etc. It only adds a boot entry to the system partitions etc. If something glitches, the risk to the current install is much lower, and you can get rid of the vhd simply by deleting one file. This is a good solution for an OS which is possibly only going to be used for one application.

 

I HATE downtime and reinstalling stuff, I can fix some of this with macrium reflect, BUT app data and my documents where games and stuff like to save stuff is more tricky to restore. I've found most win10 issues with porting over an older appdata fodder are permission related so I am getting better with quickly restoring the OS but it takes a free day or a week if I am busy. ><

Why can't anyone make a proper verification program, scan everything log it scan it once in a while if errors are found restore it if they are system file locked do it via a reboot. Seems like a no brainier to me, oh and restore points do mess with your files so I have moved anything I can off C drive.....

 

Hi there

as far as Apps and Data are concerned you are asking for something impossible for an OS to provide -- simple example say you simply update a WORD Document -- how on earth is the OS to know whether the update is good, or even if it's what you wanted to do.

Same with Games etc -- playing a game will change user data 00 the OS can't possibly know if that data is correct or whether you are playing the Game properly.

You'd need some serious sort of A.I here (Artificial Intelligence) -- and that sort of A.I we could be generations off even if we ever find it.

For DATA I'd use still use Macrium or similar to take incremental / differential backups every so often - quick to run and you can restore back as many versions as you have backups for -- and very much quicker than full restores.

Keep DATA on another HDD / Partition to the OS so if you do restore the OS you won't get problems with DATA.

It ALWAYS makes sense to keep OS on a separate HDD / partition.

The same is even true on a VM - you can create a 2nd Virtual drive or even a second partition on a virtual drive. Store your data on this and the OS on the primary HDD. Same mechanism's for backup / restore / partitioning as for a physical HOST OS.

Cheers
jimbo

 

How dose it know? Hash checks from the working files of course. Mind you,you need a freshly installed OS with no updates, this gives you you your base file information and all the files backpacked into an archive that can be live booted from to trouble shoot things with.

Then when you update the new files are scanned into the data base and archived but do not overwrite the original files in the archive(as a kind of incremental thing).

When you scan the computer may have to reboot to scan and or fix damaged files.

Its not that complicated , you can backup some system files and replace bad ones buts mostly done manually, if a file is not up to date it gets updated normally via the OS then archived accordingly.

The main thing is getting around windows file locks to restore or read a file, the rest is simple scripting and database management, sync/mirror the data and make a data base for hash info to further vet a file. Its a bit less manual than mercium,ect

 

Hi there

That doesn't of course answer the issue -- whether the file you updated is actually what you wanted to do --for example a word / EXCEL or Power point document --you may have hopelessly updated a document with loads of factual errors -- as far as the OS is concerned the file has been updated - it doesn't know if the file is correct or not -- all it can say is the file was updated and whether the data structure is OK (i.e no HDD error etc).

Same with Game playing -- if you "park" a game the data left on the HDD so you can resume from where you left off might not be what you want --you need to go back perhaps to the version before -- which is easy enough to do manually --but how in the world is the OS to know what to roll back to. !!!!!

Current backup programs are excellent and can keep as many incrementals / differentials as you want -- but I'm afraid that choosing which version to roll back to has to be a manual exercise --I'd hate it if the computer always said Roll back to the most recently backed up version -- might be OK a lot of the times but I'm certain I wouldn't want that option 100% of the time.

Cheers
jimbo