Installing Linux as a guest OS 

These are some general guidelines for Linux to follow when installing as guest OS in VPC. 
First of all the virtual disk needs to be created.

1.  Start Virtual PC. From the File menu, run the Virtual Disk Wizard and create a new hard disk image.
2.  Select a fixed size disk image of the size say 2GB. This depends on the features of Linux that are being installed.
    A typical installation will require 2GB. Disk format is not important, however, the size will be limited by the file
    system selected. (Example: FAT16=2GB limit)
   
The virtual disk has now been created.

3.  In Virtual PC, click New PC. Click Next to continue. 
4.  Select a PC name and click Next.
5.  Select Guide Me and click Next.
6.  Select Linux as the operating system you intend to run and click Next.
7.  Click Next to accept the default memory allocation for the PC. (Assigning too much memory to a Linux guest can 
    affect performance detrimentally. To achieve optimum performance, experiment with various values of the RAM to find
    the best configuration.)

8.  Click Next to select an existing hard disk image.
9.  Click Browse, and locate the disk image created in step 2, click Open. Click Next to continue.
10. Click Finish.

The virtual machine has now been created.

Installing Linux using FTP
---------------------------
11. Copy from the FTP site the boot image. This is a file by the name "bootnet.img".
12. Start the virtual machine on which Linux is to be installed.
13. Drag and drop the file "bootnet.img" from a windows explorer window to the floppy icon(the third icon).
    The virtual machine will now have captured this image into the guest PC's floppy drive.
14. You may have receive an "Invalid System Disk" error message, this will occur since no bootable
    media would have been available initially. Now select the floppy drive as the means to boot by pressing A.
15. The boot: prompt comes up. Press enter and proceed to install Linux.  
16. As the installation proceeds you will have to select FTP as the means of installation.
17. You will subsequently be asked for the IP address of the FTP server hosting the installable. 
    Type in the IP address or name of the server. You will also have to provide information about 
    the directory where the installable is present.
    e.g. FTP Server IP Address   :  ftp://jungle.metalab.unc.edu
         Directory               :  pub/Linux/distributions/redhat/7.2/en/os/i386/RedHat/ 
        
18. The installation then proceeds as it would with a usual Linux installation.
  
However the following things have to be followed. This is required for Virtual PC to support
Linux as a guest OS.  

- Select a Generic 2-button PS/2 mouse when configuring the mouse type for X-Windows.
- You will need to partition the disk image for use in Linux. If manually partitioning, at a 
  minimum you should create a swap partition and a root partition. You may need to delete the
  existing partitions, especially if you formatted in FAT16, or FAT32 when creating the drive image.
- You may be warned that there is no space available on the drive, this is normal, you need to 
  partition and format the disk image for Linux.
- X video configuration should use the S3 Trio64 (generic) with 4MB of VRAM. AND NO OTHER Video card.
- Sound may need to be configured manually using sndconfig. The sound card is a Sound Blaster 16, 
  the setting are I/O Port: 220, IRQ:5, DMA1: 1, DMA2:5, MPU: 330.