If you are using Windows XP and want to use certain virtual machine, no doubt, VirtualBox/VMwarePlayer should be your first 2 options. De facto, VirtualBox was my 1st choice as I once ran it on my Window XP with SP2 and as we all know that VMware Player is nothing else but a player – playing the image created by VMware Workstation…Now thing’s changed after i moved to Windows XP SP3 and on VMware Player:

1.  VBoxTestOGL.exe Error when starting VirtualBox 3.2.10

This is the main reason why i do NOT recommend VirtualBox. It is an already known error from VirtualBox forum and still no fix for it till i write this blog. Of course, we could ignore this and indeed VirtualBox will get started after few seconds. However, I never get my RH5.0 Enterprise Linux run – right struck in the hardware init. I am NOT sure if it is related with this error. However, it really makes me think about another virtual machine – as you know, VMware Player.

2. VMware Player is NOT just a player right now

Thanks to VMware Inc., now we could create virtual machines in VMware Player and though it is NOT open srouce, it is FREE – Forget VMware Workstation right now. You get VMware Player for FREE! Now, i installed Solaris 10 b50 on it and it works well without any error. Please kindly note that you may need to download the OS tools to support corresponding OS – Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Windows…I would recommed downloading them all before you install any guest OS.

Conclusion: It would be nice for VirtualBox running on Solaris. However, this is not the same case on my Windows XP with SP3 – VMware Player wins this round.