Fellow Techies, I have a question.

[lostangel]

Anyone tried to run everquest using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007?

 

[Taron]

I haven't tried, but Virtual PC uses a crappy emulated video card.

 

[lostangel]

I'm just trying to avoid building another pc to have my cleric in the group. ATM I have 71 necro, 70 shm and 70 mage. I'm building another pc from spare parts to box the 71 bard in the mix. I have a 70 clr that i log in to rez anytime I wipe. But he needs some love and xp also. So if EQ will run under virtual pc, I can save having to piece together a fifth pc.

Main PC is AMD 6000 AM2 x2 dual core cpu
4 gb 800 mhz ddr2 ram
2 sata 80 gb western digital drives
512 mb ati x1800 crossfire edition
Vista Ultimate x64

 

[Lord_Vyper]

What are you thinking the gain of trying this would be?

You're running a program that consumes resources in order to house a program that consumes resources, and the consumption is, of course, cumulative.

 

[Bearcub]

What are you thinking the gain of trying this would be?

I'm just trying to avoid building another pc to have my cleric in the group.

My guess is he doesn't want to have to keep building PCs...

 

[Yoda007]

You should be able to box the bard on the PC from spare parts and all the other chars on your main PC.

If you cant box that many, try dropping your display settings and possibly resolution.

When I was seriously boxing I was only running 800*600

 

[DemonH2]

You should be able to way top that. My system specs are roughly half of yours and i have no problem 4 boxing at 1024x768 (with most of the settings turned at least part way down). I could see where you would need a bard on its own box but other than that i would see no reason why anyone would want the setup your is trying to achieve.

 

[lostangel]

I am trying to do this so I can have an instance of EQ and MQ2 running for eack toon. Switching back and forth between toons only gets me killed. I guess I am not skilled enough to alt-tab back and forth fast enough.

The way I am running now.
I am running necro on main PC
Mage running AFKmage on other pc.
shm running shmbot on the other pc.
Will soon have another pc built to run bard (still need to find a decent bard macro
Need/want to get cleric in the group as well.

 

[DemonH2]

You are running it in windowed mode i assume? Because i really just dont see how a virtual machine could be quicker than switching between windowed mode. If your not then just set your eq resolution and your desktop resolution to the same resolution, its basically still fullscreen and you can switch quickly. Other than that try out wineq, thats not bad for boxing.

 

[Coffee]

Virtual PC really isn't designed for the concept you are describing. I'll bet it will actually slow things down more than help.

First, follow the tweak guide in the Help forum section to get the max out of your machine.

Second, get WinEQ2 asap. If you are playing the same group, make a different Profile for each character (so it each has its own ini file). Then you can setup fixed hotkeys for each profile. This means the same hotkey will trigger your profile every time. CTRL-ALT-1 for your first window, CTRL-ALT-2 for your second window, so on. You can change these to whatever you want (I opted for ALT+Num keys).

So you can put the ones you need to access in emergencies, say the tank as 1, the cleric as 2, the crowd control as 3, then when you need the cleric instead of alt-tabbing through a list trying to find it, you just hit ctrl-alt-2 and you're there.

It takes about a day of doing this to get used to it, in the beginning its weird, but as you use it, you're fingers learn to do it on their own and it will become as second nature as typing what you want to say.

 

[gladimus]

I was boxing 6 toons when I was playing heavy. 4 toons on 1 PC, then my slower on another PC and Cleric on the third. Of course the other 3 toons on the main PC all had auto mac's.

 

[JimJohnson]

Main PC is AMD 6000 AM2 x2 dual core cpu
4 gb 800 mhz ddr2 ram
2 sata 80 gb western digital drives
512 mb ati x1800 crossfire edition
Vista Ultimate x64

Even if your doing TSS you should be able to run 4-5 characters without massive lag with that system if you spent the time to tweak it.

As coffee said follow his tweak guide and use WinEQ2 Pro. Pro version is worth the 3 $ a month. You can say FPS does same thing but if you actually ever used both you can see the difference.

Also check out the MQ2Viewport plugin, this will reset your viewport to 0 0 1 1 everytime a window becomes a background session, this means your background windows will not draw as much resources. Once you make a window the active window it goes back to max viewport size.

 

[KrisAtTiac]

Anyone tried to run everquest using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007?

Yes. I needed to prove to my boss (also a gamer) that the group needed not only new computers but more of them, without in any way compromising the integrity of the applications already running.
Used company Optiplex 745 -- 2.66GHz,4MB,1066MHz -- with stock XP Pro OS & 3/4 dedicated to VPC. The corporate programs ran in the background driven by a commercial loading product, VPC with EQ in foreground under live control. Making a long story short, both the corporate programs and EQ took performance hits initially; paging files of both needed frequent increases.

Point made. The VPC has been deleted and there is no further conversation about running obsolete databases on VPC. 20 new computers have been ordered.

 

[DemonH2]

Yeah well im sure that actually had a use. Were you testing it for some sort of program that would only run on an older operating system? Other than that and playing with OS's i havent found too many uses for virtual PC.

 

[Lord_Vyper]

Yes. I needed to prove to my boss (also a gamer) that the group needed not only new computers but more of them, without in any way compromising the integrity of the applications already running.
Used company Optiplex 745 -- 2.66GHz,4MB,1066MHz -- with stock XP Pro OS & 3/4 dedicated to VPC. The corporate programs ran in the background driven by a commercial loading product, VPC with EQ in foreground under live control. Making a long story short, both the corporate programs and EQ took performance hits initially; paging files of both needed frequent increases.

Point made. The VPC has been deleted and there is no further conversation about running obsolete databases on VPC. 20 new computers have been ordered.

That.... seems a remarkably convoluted way of going about things.