How can I test new software without damaging my system?

Have you ever downloaded some interesting program, installed it, then found it was not what you wanted? So you uninstall it, but there are files left behind, the registry now has some junk in it, your home page in Internet Explorer got changed, or IE won't work at all, and now you're cursing the author of the program?

Or you download something with a free 30 day trial, you run the program, but the company now wants you to pay $500 to continue past 30 days. So you uninstall the trial, then re-install to get another 30 days, and discover that it knows you did this, because it has written a hidden file somewhere on your system, and you can't get rid of it.

Have you had a desire to experiment with one of the Linux distributions, but don't want to mess up your own system?

You can solve all of these problems, if you have 1GB or more of memory, by using a technique called "virtualisation". There are now two excellent Virtual PC emulators available, totally free. Both require Windows XP or Vista. What they do is set up a pretend personal computer, with a basic set of hardware, including display, keyboard, mouse, and network interfaces. They then map the pretend stuff to your real stuff, so you share your keyboard, mouse, display, and network card between the pretend and the real.

You can get Microsoft Virtual PC from here.

You can get VMware Player from here.

In either case, download the software and install it. When you run it, you will be asked how to configure your virtual PC, and what operating system you will be using. You need the CD-ROM (or an image of the CD-ROM) for the operating system you want to install. You are not limited to installing Windows, you can install any operating system. And you are not limited to one virtual PC either. I have successfully run 4 virtual PCs simultaneously on a machine with a 2 GHz processor and 2 GB of memory.

You could, for example, install a Windows 98 virtual PC, a Windows XP virtual PC, and a Linux virtual PC. If you have enough memory, you can even run them all simultaneously. If not, run only one at a time.

The minimum memory you need in your system is 512 MB, but I highly recommend 1GB or more. If you don't have enough, the emulated PC might run very slowly. You could run Windows 98 OK, but Windows XP will just grind away, taking 10 times as long to do anything. Memory is cheap; buy more, if necessary.

The virtual PC does run slower than a normal PC, because it is using emulation. But it's not overly noticeable in most applications. Not recommended for recent games, which require the fasest hardware.

However, I have found that the sound emulation is not great, at least with Microsoft Virtual PC. When testing my Speak Easy Thai software on a Microsoft Virtual PC, the programs worked fine, but the sound was crappy, in some cases duplicated or echoed. But that is the only fault I have ever found.

When you first start up your virtual PC, you get a black window, that looks just like the black window with BIOS messages that any normal PC has. Put in your Windows CD-ROM, or Linux CD-ROM, and install the operating system normally.

At this point, if you have installed Windows, right click on the desktop of the virtual PC, choose "Properties" and change the basic colour of the display, so that it is different. If your normal Windows dislay is blue, make the virtual one green or red or something different. This is because when you are using the virtual PC, the emulation is so good that you forget you are working on the pretend computer. If you change the basic colour scheme, you will have a visual indication of which machine you are using.

If this is Windows, make sure the Internet connection works, then run Windows Update and download all the updates (XP has 85 at last count).

Now switch back to your real PC, and using Windows Explorer, make a copy of the files used by the virtual PC. In the virtual PC, you have a pretend disk drive. This is a normal Windows data file, and it can be copied as a backup.

This allows you to recover to a fully installed system, but with no software, should you wish to do so at some time in the future, without having to go through the lengthy Windows installation again.

On the virtual PC, now install that software you wanted to play with. Don't like it? Close the virtual PC, tell the menu to delete it, then copy your backup back into place, and tell the menu to open the backup. Presto change-oh! You have a clean virtual PC again, ready for more experimentation.

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