Making a C# windows OS emulator need some advice!

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Hey I need some advice on this issue

I am building a windows emulator And I need to know where I need to start

What I have built so far I do not want to give my code out right now so any advice without code examples would be better for me thanks...

I have built a simple launcher in c# that can run any foreign exe inside of the parent winform in visual studio So I am going to the right track but I need to know how to get a windows os to boot on the winform that I built inside of the parent winform...

I think that other emulators use something like freedos to install and emulate os's inside of the parent winform but they also emulate hardware also so I wander if there's a easier way to do this without a lot of coding. I just want to save a lot of time on this without having to take a long time coding lines and lines of code I know that I need to code some things but I don't want to spend to much time so Any advice would be very appreciated.....

What I have tried:

I have built a launcher that can run any foreign exe inside of the parent winform in visual studio 2017

Posted 6-Mar-18 15:29pm

John Nay

Updated 8-Mar-18 6:42am

#realJSOP

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BillWoodruff 6-Mar-18 21:56pm

"I need to know how to get a windows os to boot on the winform that I built inside of the parent winform"

Have you looked at Docker ?

John Nay 6-Mar-18 22:12pm

Yeah I do not like that option...

Dave Kreskowiak 6-Mar-18 23:36pm

So how did you write this "launcher" and get the executable window to show up in your own form?

To me, it sounds like you just wrote the code around a Process instance to launch the target executable and just re-parented the main window of the application with a call to the Win32 function, SetParent.

John Nay 6-Mar-18 23:52pm

I used this demo as a base point you can get it here https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/9123/Hosting-EXE-Applications-in-a-WinForm-project

Then I choosed a menustrip and added a open function to the menustrip then I wrote this kind of c# code to call a exe to run inside of the parent windows form..

Process p = Process.Start("C:\\Program Files (x86)\\DOSBox-0.74\\DOSBox.exe");
Thread.Sleep(500);
p.WaitForInputIdle();
SetParent(p.MainWindowHandle, this.Handle);

And it calls the exe and loads it in my winform launcher which has the application_control tool from the toolbox that came with the download I sent you above on that link hope this answers your question...

Also I made sure that I had the isMidiContainer is set to true

Richard MacCutchan 7-Mar-18 5:06am

Using Process.Start is a million miles from being a Windows OS emulator. You need to understand how to allocate memory space for the new process, how to load it into memory with its associated libraries, and how to link in to its main starting point. And that is just a tiny part of the end product.

Dave Kreskowiak 7-Mar-18 8:23am

Yeah, that article isn't anywhere on the path of a "Windows emulator". There is no way to extend the existing project to support "booting Windows".

Seriously, there is no way you're going to write a virtualization environment to do Windows "emulation" without writing "a lot of code".

What you've done is more akin to providing a very simple Desktop for application windows to show up in, nothing more.

John Nay 6-Mar-18 23:55pm

I've uploaded a video for proof if you need it lol!

Richard MacCutchan 7-Mar-18 8:17am

Where?

F-ES Sitecore 7-Mar-18 5:21am

If you;

a) want to write an OS emulator but don't know where to start
b) think that changing the parent of an EXE to your winform is a start
c) want to do this without writing a lot of code
d) can't even work out that you need to use the "reply" button when replying to comments

...I'd say in all honesty that the task is currently beyond you. This is a huge thing and will involve a *lot* of code, and probably not even possible using c#

John Nay 7-Mar-18 8:55am

Well how about that I make one and let you eat your words if you think I cant do it that's funny there's always more ways of doing things kinda like the way I showed you when you thought that it would be difficult to make a exe run inside of a parent program when you even wanted to know how I pulled it off a good programmer knows not one way but many ways to doing a hard task That's what makes a great programmer and all honesty most programmer's lack this kind of skill and make comments like this to people I'm not hating on you but I do make a point for sure. I will post the download on this site when I'm finished to let you gaze at it in amazement for sure lol... mabe it might make you think a little about other ways of doing things because what I am good at is doing it the easier way That's what makes me stand out from the others for sure.

Dave Kreskowiak 7-Mar-18 12:03pm

HAHAHAHAHA!!! Let me clue you into something about your little project where you want to "boot Windows" in a window. What you're describing is rewriting "VMware Workstation" from scratch. If you can do that, you won't be writing an article here on CP, 'cause, seriously, it would be hundreds of them! You're going to be too busy making a lot of money stealing a piece of VMware's pie.

Good luck!

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Gerry Schmitz · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-08T06:43:00

Solution 1

Your talking about "hosting virtual machines".

VM Box; Hyper-V; "Parallels".

At a minimum, you need to trap all "Windows API" calls via your "hypervisor".

So, one could start by looking at "hypervisor architecture" for VM's.

Posted 8-Mar-18 6:43am

Gerry Schmitz

Comments

John Nay 8-Mar-18 13:24pm

Thank you so much for taking the time to help me out really appreciate it thank you you helped me more than the others that posted so really thank you that advice is good

[no name] 8-Mar-18 14:15pm

You're welcome.

(Oracle's) VM Box is also open-source; if you want to look at code.

John Nay 8-Mar-18 14:48pm

Alright thanks for the advice...

[no name] 8-Mar-18 14:52pm

Here are MS specs for creating a windows compatible hypervisor:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/reference/tlfs

Maciej Los 8-Mar-18 14:53pm

5ed!

[no name] 8-Mar-18 15:19pm

Thanks!

John Nay 8-Mar-18 23:12pm

Would someone achieve emulation with opencv or is it not like hypervisor

https://github.com/opencv/opencv

[no name] 9-Mar-18 0:44am

Totally different application area: "computer vision" (recognition).

More to do with "virtual reality" (these days).

(I'll confirm when my Ryzen 7 GTX 1070 arrives).

John Nay 9-Mar-18 1:12am

I'm jealus I only have a 950series