lucky7456969 wrote:

I want to achieve some advanced stuff. 1) Has anyone used a third party virtual desktop software to switch full screen between V […]
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I want to achieve some advanced stuff.
1) Has anyone used a third party virtual desktop software to switch full screen between VMWare host and guests
like Windows 7 x64 + XP + Linux

2) Has anyone tried to patch the VMWare bios so that the VM can boot up with a custom bios, like intel D865PERL bios
that I got?

3) Has anyone used VMWare to access physical hard drives directly but no data corruption is caused?
The types of files include videos, musics and games, except system files that are to be installed on separate
partitions?

Thanks
Jack

1- The biggest issue here would be letting whatever keystrokes you plan on using to the host OS to alternate between virtual desktops.

2 - Hell no, that would only ever work if the hardware VMWare emulates is 100% compatible (chipsets, onboard controllers, SuperIO, etc.) with that board... Which I doubt.

3- Why would you want to do that exactly? You can't exactly share an HDD (virtual or a physical one being accessed directly) between multiple machines. If a VM is accessing a disk directly, no other VM, and not even the host OS, can access that. If you want to share stuff between VMs and the host OS, either use VMWare's shared folders or use networking.

VMware does let you pass through a whole disk. If you're running their dedicated hypervisor, you can even pass through whole PCI devices if your HW supports it.

If XP+ is my guest OS as far as Windows-guest-on-Windows-host goes, then I might as well be running apps/games natively.

lucky7456969 wrote:

2) Has anyone tried to patch the VMWare bios so that the VM can boot up with a custom bios, like intel D865PERL bios
that I got?

No point. Use PCem.

Have you tried Windows 8/8.1 Hyper-V feature?

Running 3D intensive stuff on a virtualized machine, is not really what you want. Better to do it native.
Stuff like server's (file, mail, website) are just right for a vitualized environment.
Even desktop applications like Word and MP3 playback is ok, running on a Guest-OS. (photoshop, no)

I think both VMWare and Vitualbox will fail DXDiag's DirectX7 and DirectX 8 tests with some odd error message. (And this is with the experimental 3D driver installed on both of them).

I don't think they're ever going to bother implementing support for anything other than DX9+.

And even DX9 doesn't work properly.