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gromackFlag for United States of America

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Hyper V at home...

My home computer is a Dell XPS 9560, running Win10 Pro.
I want to install a Win7 VM, to install a Point of Sale program on, so I can use to learn the software. Unfortunately, no Win7 drivers are available for my laptop, or would I be able to use the Win10 ones? What about making a VM from a real POS terminal & import it as a VM? Would that be a better option?
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Gregory Miller
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I do not think I would be concerned about driver availability for your laptop physical hardware. Most VM software emulate your hardware and will have most drivers for the OS of choice. Not 100% of the time but most will be there which will be plenty for you to explore the POS software. The only gotcha is if the POS software tries to manipulate the hardware directly then it will not matter what VM software you use because it will not work properly in most of them.
Second thought is to use Oracle Virtual Box as the VM platform instead of Hyper-V. It is simple and gives a more generic hardware abstraction to remove the drivers issue.
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Network adapter was main one I was concerned with, for windows updates, plus I believe during the installation it may need to DL other components.
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Hyper-V should be fine.  It's also a type 1 hypervisor and should provide better performance than the type 2 that is virtual box.

Your biggest concern will be licensing.  You really need to be using Enterprise with Software assurance or get a VDA license to run Windows in a VM, even on a workstation as I understand it.
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I'll probably be done with it within the 3 day activation period, as I'm just wanting to try some stuff with the software in a controlled environment, as opposed to the real thing. I had a boxed copy copy of win7 laying around, so I'm guessing that will work?
My biggest concern is getting my network adapter to work, as software downloads & installs NET during the process.
The network adapter is no problem in Hyper-V.  You can also download Trials from Microsoft's Web site.  Never had a problem with the adapter but even if you did, you can use the legacy adapter instead of the synthetic one.  (Just note, you cannot use a Gen2 VM with Win7, Gen2 Requires Server 2012 or Windows 8 or later).
To use win7 in a VM, no enterprise license nor an SA is needed. Please don't confuse this with VDI deployments.
See the win7 pro EULA: https://www.strath.ac.uk/media/ps/its/its-software/Windows_7_Professional_English_7bb89e9f-20ea-4555-892f-394539ec1090.pdf
d. Use with Virtualization Technologies. Instead of using the software directly on the licensed computer, you may install and use the software within only one virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system on the licensed computer.
Of course, hyper-v is a good idea and no driver problems will occur since win7 is supported on win10's hyper-v.
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Dunno if it matters, but all I have on laptop is a wireless adapter, which I imagine is one of those half dozen. 'Unknown device' showing up in device manager. Currently making a vhdx with Disk2vhd  from the machine I didn't want to learn on, to see if I can do anything with that.
You are unaware it seems, that virtualization does not care for the hardware of the physical system. Don't worry, your win7 will be fine in that vm.
@McKnife - I recently had a similar question elsewhere where Microsoft Reps stated to virtualize a copy of Windows client you needed Enterprise SA or VDA.  The link you posed may be perfectly legitimate however, it's NOT hosted by Microsoft and if you intend to reference Microsoft LEGAL documents you should post from their site, IMO.  Furthermore, I agree this is a questionable license issue with potentially valid loopholes but that doesn't mean proper research (including contacting Microsoft if you're not (as the person doing this) 100% certain about your licensing status).
http://download.microsoft.com/Documents/UseTerms/Windows%207_Professional_English_7bb89e9f-20ea-4555-892f-394539ec1090.pdf is the same. VDI/VDA are not related to this and not topic here as both relate to hosting VMs on another system thought for remote access.
The EULA for Win7 home prmium holds the same passage, by the way: http://download.microsoft.com/Documents/UseTerms/Windows%207_Home%20Premium_English_f3fcb9dc-3b69-4a18-ae3c-7d7bede82812.pdf - ever seen home under SA?
The scenario I had did not involve hosting on another system (it was using a separate VM to get around full tunnel VPNs where the host PC also ran another VM of the same version of Windows) and I was told I would STILL need Enterprise with SA.  VDA MAY work as well, though it might not be quite what it was intended for.
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Ok, I used Disk2VHD on machine I want to virtualize, tried importing it & was told 'Hyper-V did not find any virtual machines to import from location...'
File currently is on an external USB3 drive & it is a .VHDX file...
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McKnife
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Yeah, still pretty new to the whole VM thing & this was first time in creating one from another computer, I had left it running at that stage when I left for the day. During that process, does it copy or import the contents on to my laptop's HD or will it run from the external HD?
Runs from the external.
Disk2VHD creates a VHD copy of the source disk.  It does NOT create a VM.  The Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter Tool will create the VM.  If you use Disk2VHD, then you need to create a VM and tell it to use the VHD you created as the hard drive for that VM.
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I imported the VHD into my VM, but still have no network access. Laptop only has wireless & Win7 drivers aren't available for laptop
In this particular instance, it's not a deal breaker, as I only am using to learn POS software, but if I needed network access, what's the fix?User generated image
You will need to look a little closer: There's the Microsoft virtual machine bus network adapter. If I instalkl win7 clean into my win10 hyper-v, I see the same network adapter and it works right away. Please verify in the hyper-v GUI that the virtual machine's network adapter is connected to a virtual switch of the type "external network". If not, connect it to one (even if that means to create a new virtual switch).
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Yes, I noticed that, but in my network connections on VM it shows as cable unplugged, keeping in mind that laptop has no Ethernet connection, only wireless.
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Thanks to all!