Knowledge Base

How to determine whether the Virtual PC Additions are installed

Article ID: 833140

Article Last Modified on 1/19/2004

APPLIES TO

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004

IN THIS TASK

SUMMARY
Determine whether the Virtual Machine Additions are installed
Install the Additions
Features that are provided by the Virtual Machine Additions

SUMMARY

This article describes how to install the Virtual Machine Additions and how to determine whether the Virtual Machine Additions are already installed.

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Determine whether the Virtual Machine Additions are installed

To determine whether the Virtual Machine Additions are installed, view the Shared Folders icon on the Virtual PC toolbar. If the Shared Folders icon is not available, the Virtual Machine Additions are not installed. If the Shared Folders icon is available, the Virtual Machine Additions are installed.

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Install the Virtual Machine Additions

To install the Virtual Machine Additions, follow these steps:

Start the virtual machine, and then on the Action menu, click Install or Update Virtual Machine Additions. The Virtual PC installation program appears on the guest PC.
On the New Virtual Machine window, click Continue.
On the Virtual Machine Additions InstallShield Wizard Click Next.
After the installation has completed, click Finish, and then click Yes to restart the virtual machine.

Note Virtual Machine Additions are available for the following guest operating systems:

Microsoft Windows 95
Microsoft Windows 98
Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
MS-DOS 6.22
IBM OS/2 Warp 4 Fixpack 15, OS/2 Warp Convenience Pack 1, and OS/2 Warp Convenience Pack 2

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Features provided by the Virtual Machine Additions

Virtual PC provides features that integrate a Windows virtual machine with your physical computer. These features are not features of Microsoft Windows. You must manually install the Virtual Machine Additions on the virtual machine boot partition after you have installed the operating system.

For additional information about the boot partition, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

314470 Definition of System Partition and Boot Partition

The features that are provided by the Virtual PC Additions include the following:

Drag-and-drop editing.
Folder sharing.
Integrated mouse.
Clipboard sharing.
MS-DOS CD-ROM support.
Optimized video drivers.
Time synchronization.
Dynamic resizing of the virtual machine window. This feature automatically adjusts the size of the guest operating system desktop.
Improved operating system performance.