Windows Phone 7 emulator - won't run in a virt

Question

Macbook Pro 2011 i7 13". Mac OSX 10.6.7, bootcamp partition running Windows 7. Am running a 240GB SSD and 8GB ram, the computer is more than fast enough to run Visual Studio 2010 in a VM.

If I run Visual Studio from Bootcamp it works fine and develop my apps. Reboot into OSX and fire up the same partition using Parallels in either window or coherence mode I get the message:

Windows Phone Emulator is doing a complete OS boot...."

and the emulator, closes. I've found a few threads and posts about this:

• https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/593422/windows-phone-emulator-shuts-down-computer
• http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/68634/481915.aspx#481915
• Windows phone 7 takes forever to deploy

I understand it's not officially supported but if there is a workaround it would be amazing as I'd prefer to "live" in Mac OSX and just use Windows for Office and Visual Studio. I like this working model.

Any workarounds, any advice?

Answer 1

Windows Phone Emulator is a virtual machine, and you can't run a virtual machine inside another one...

Answer 2

Its not likely that you can do this as inside the emulator is Virtual PC, another virtual machine. It would be quite taxing to run a VM inside a VM.