www.TheJoe.com

Looks like I just won’t listen to other tech guys out there sometimes.   I am trying to do what seems to me is theoretically possible but in actuality may be impossible.

Anyways, the latest “fun” project to me is getting Windows XP Media Center 2005 R2 to run in a virtual machine.

SO, here is the plan:

I am setting up a box that will run VMWare Server (doing this for the USB support)

I have a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB that has hardware mpeg 2 encoding. (needed for MCE)

The box configuration is:

AMD Athlon 3700+
4 Gig Ram
2x 300 Gig SATA drives in Striped Raid Config
1x 160 Gig Boot Drive

Host OS is Windows 2003 Enterprise Server x64 (why? because I have a liscense for it!)

1) I will install Windows MCE 2005 R2 in a VM
2) I will run 3d Analyze to emulate DirectX 9 in the VM
3) I will install the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB and route the USB to the VM (VM Server does this)

and if everything goes well, I should have a fully running MCE in a VM!

Why do I do this?  Because I can!