My first Virtual PC under Vista or x64

It’s been quite awhile since I created a virtual PC; a couple of years probably.  This is the first time I tried to create one under either Vista or x64.  Here were some interesting findings…

I used the wizard to create the first virtual PC and its hard drive.  I booted to a Vista x64 install and walked through the first stages of the process with no problems.  After an hour to an hour and a half, it rebooted and I thought I was going to be well on my way to having my virtual PC ready to use.  I was wrong; instead I got a message that I was trying to boot to an x64-based operating system from a machine that doesn’t support 64-bit mode.  I didn’t note the actual message, but it was telling me that the virtual PC was actually a 32-bit machine, not a 64-bit one.  Time to start over.

I deleted the hard drive and recreated it manually.  I expected 10GB would be sufficient.  About 5 minutes later, I find that 10GB is not enough; it says that 13024MB (or something like that) is required.  Time to start over.

I deleted the hard drive and recreated it manually; this time at 15GB.  About 5 minutes later, I get back to the same screen for selecting the install drive.  Now it tells me that 17048MB (or something like that) is “recommended.”  Since I was previously told that what the requirement was, and I exceeded that, and this was just a recommendation, I thought I’d be able to get past this message, but I couldn’t.  Time to start over.

I deleted the hard drive and recreated it manually; this time with 64GB dynamically sized.  The installation is in the process of copying files (again).  Let’s hope that this time I’m in the clear! (yn)