Can setting up a VM cause damage to main system

Hi,

It's many years since I looked at setting up a VM so memory is a bit hazy

If you set one up wrongly can it mess anything up on your PC

I am assuming the worst that can happen is if you allocate RAM wrongly you main machine will possibly crash but a reboot would fix this

Thanks

I haven't heard anything like that.


But then again I haven't run a VM for years lol. Don't trust my advice.

You should be fine, you would have to work very hard to break anything using virtualbox. It is pretty straightforward too.

I agree.. I've never had an issue with VMWare.

Thanks for replies, didn't think there was but wanted to check

Have VMware installed, just need to wait for a time when I can download 10 to install

Simply put. . .NO

Yes, under certain circumstances if you're not vigilant. Say your OS resides on a 120GB SSD, and with a handful of other programs on there you have 60GB free. When setting up your VM in VMWare the default installation path is C: so if you create a virtual machine that will ever be allowed to reach that size you would have a problem. It would be easily sorted by simply deleting the VM, but if you have spent time setting it up you won't want to be doing that.

If you do set it up correctly though, as others have said, it can't affect your main machine.

I don't quite understand how the VM uses resources. During set up it asks how much Memory to allocate. If my system has 4GB and I allocate 2GB to the VM does that mean my main system will now only have 2GB to work with? Or can I give it everything and it will use what it needs with no effect on the host?

Someone said I should install the 32-bit version of Win 10 as a VM even though I have a 64-bit system because it will perform better with less memory. So I assumed the above reason was why.

You have it right. If you allocate 2GB to the VM, then you'll have that much less RAM for your main system. It's best on a system with only 4GB of RAM to stick with 32-bit for guest OSes.

I don't quite understand how the VM uses resources. During set up it asks how much Memory to allocate. If my system has 4GB and I allocate 2GB to the VM does that mean my main system will now only have 2GB to work with? Or can I give it everything and it will use what it needs with no effect on the host?

Someone said I should install the 32-bit version of Win 10 as a VM even though I have a 64-bit system because it will perform better with less memory. So I assumed the above reason was why.

The RAM assigned to vm is taken from the total amount of RAM available on your host. As the host still needs some of it to run, you cannot assign all of your host RAM to a vm. In your case you can assign a maximum of 2.5 to 2.8 GB to a vm out of 4 GB total, depending on the virtualization program you are using.

Some virtualization programs allow using so called Dynamic RAM. When Dynamic RAM is selected, the vm uses at any given moment only as much RAM as it needs though at least a set minimum, and never more than the set maximum. This example from Hyper-Vvirtualization, my Windows 10 Tech Previewvm:

Dynamic RAM enabled (yellow highlight), the VM starts with 1024 MB (#1) and is allowed to decrease and increase the amount of RAM it uses as it sees fit, though always using a minimum of 512 MB and never exceeding 4096 MB (#2).

Kari