2 workstations running off one computer? 2 mice, 2 keyboards, 2 monitors?

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Christopher715

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May 10, 2013
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I've downloaded VMware player, and was wondering how I get the second "system" to operate.

I'm running Windows 8 Pro, and wanted to use the VGA output for one monitor and the HDMI for the other monitor. How do I go about tackling this? Thank you in advance
 
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faalin

faalin

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Feb 22, 2012
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If im reading this right you want one desktop with two monitors and 2 KB/mice

first monitor would have win 8 on it
second monitor would have the virtual os

once you plug the 2 keyboards and mice in they will conflict with each other. one guy moves his mouse to the left on win 8 will make the mouse move left on the vm machine. You cant tell the each computer what keyboard and mouse to use they will see both and react to both.
 
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molletts

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Jun 16, 2009
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It's not too hard to do this with Linux but I don't believe there's an easy way to do it with a desktop version of Windows. You'd need to use Windows MultiPoint Server.

I don't know offhand whether there's a way to achieve something similar using a hypervisor such as Xen - it may be possible to assign different hardware devices to different guest VMs so that one guest sees one console and the other guest sees the other. You'd probably have to have two separate graphics cards, though, as modern multi-head ones appear as a single PCI device (rather than one per head) and would therefore be impossible to split in this way. It would be an interesting project...
 
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Christopher715

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May 10, 2013
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Interesting to say the LEAST ;) as I don't have the foggiest notion of what I'm doing. I thought it would be just 'partition the hard drive into 2 partitions" and install Windows 7 on one partition and Windows 8 Pro on the other. I didn't know that I was going to have to become a computer scientist to do such, I guess I just use my Google TV as my second "workstation". Thank you for the advice. If you look at the "related sources" below this forum, you can see that there are at least 6 posts asking the same basic question (reworded, of course) by others who had the same situ. It rather boggles my mind that with all that computers CAN do with all the applications available, that something that sounds as simple as adding a secondary workstation involves some miracle of a deity.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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It *is* possible. but not necessarily easy.

Terminal services, thin clients, server architecture....various buzzwords to get to your solution.

But if you think about it, the stuff needed to do something like this is non-trivial. This keyboard goes with that monitor. Applications, mouse inputs...all need to be separated.

Look here for a possible (non-free) solution.
I've not tried this, but it may work.
 
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