Q Help
Create or Edit an Emulated PC
To create a new PC select "New Emulated PC" from the Menu "Emulated PC" or the Toolbar.
To edit a PC, click once on the PC in the existing Emulated PC list and select "Edit Emulated PC" from the Menu "Emulated PC" or the Toolbar.
General Settings: The "Basics"
- Give Your Emulated PC a Name
Please note that you cannot use "/", ":" or "." in the Emulated PC's name.
- Emulation Options
- Enable Networking

This option enables access to the Internet via connection sharing with your Mac. It also enables file sharing between the emulated PC and your Mac via Windows Sharing in OS X.
If your Mac is not connected to the internet, iEmulator will automatically disable this option.
- Pause Emulation While in Background

This option, if checked, will automatically pause the emulated PC if it's put into the background or hidden, thus freeing up CPU cycles for Mac OS X operations.
Hardware Settings
- RAM Allocation
This allows you to select how much RAM memory iEmulator will dedicate to the emulated PC. Please remember that you need to provide enough RAM to the emulated operating system as well as to Mac OS X and any other Mac applications that are running simultaneously with iEmulator.
Some rough guidelines for various emulated operating systems are:
- DOS: 1MB to 16MB
- Windows 95: 32MB to 64MB
- Windows 98, 98SE or ME: 64MB to 192MB
- Windows 2000: 128MB to 256MB
- Windows XP: 128MB to 512MB
- Windows Vista (Beta): 512MB to 1GB
- Linux (console only): 4MB to 32MB
- Linux (with X Server/GUI) 32MB to 256MB
- Sound Card Options
iEmulator can emulated one of three PC sound cards: an Adlib, a SoundBlaster 16/AWE32 or an Ensoniq ES1370. The SoundBlaster 16 is the best choice for use in Windows.
- Floppy Disk Emulation
iEmulator emulates a floppy diskette drive through the use of floppy disk images.
- No Floppy: Do not emulated a floppy diskette drive
- Choose Floppy Disk Image: Select an existing floppy disk image to use in the emulated floppy diskette drive
- Hard Disk Emulation
This is the primary hard disk for the emulated PC (commonly known as "Drive C:"). Two hard disk image formats are available:
- qcow
"Qcow" is a compressed disk image: when created, a qcow image is only a few kilobytes in size, but grows as required until it reaches the maximum size which you enter here. Please note that qcow images do not shrink when you delete data on them.
- raw
"Raw" is an uncompressed disk image: it can take a few minutes to create a raw disk image (also known as ".iso" or ".img"), and the disk image immediately takes up the entire amount of disk space that you enter here. However, raw disk images have an advantage that they can be mounted by the OS X Finder by double-clicking on them (you may have to change the file suffix to .img before OS X will recognize that it can be mounted).
Your format and size options are:
- No Hard disk: Do not emulate a Hard disk drive in this emulated PC.
- New 100MB Compressed Disk Image: Creates and selects a new 100MB compressed ("qcow") hard disk image.
- New 1GB Compressed Disk Image: Creates and selects a new 1GB compressed ("qcow") hard disk image.
- New 4GB Compressed Disk Image: Creates and selects a new 4GB compressed ("qcow") hard disk image.
- New 4GB Uncompressed Disk Image: Creates and selects a new 4GB uncompressed ("raw") hard disk image.
- Create Custom Disk Image: Enables the creation of a custom size & format hard disk image.
- Choose Existing Disk Image: Enables the selection of an already-existing hard disk image.
Some rough guidelines for various emulated operating systems are:
- DOS: 1MB to 128MB
- Windows 95: 100MB to 512MB
- Windows 98, 98SE or ME: 250MB to 2GB
- Windows 2000: 1GB to 4GB+
- Windows XP: 2GB to 4GB+
- Windows Vista (Beta): 13GB+
- Linux (minimum): 100MB to 250MB
- Linux (normal distribution): 4GB+
- CD-ROM Emulation
You can use a CD image to emulated a CD-ROM drive, or you can use the actual, physical CD-ROM drive in your Mac with your Emulated PC.
- No CD-ROM: Do not emulate a CD-ROM drive in this emulated PC.
- Built-in CD-ROM: Use the actual, physical CD-ROM Drive in your Mac with this emulated PC.
- Choose Existing CD-ROM Image: Enables the selection of an already-existing CD image for use as the CD-ROM with this emulated PC.
- Choose the Boot Device
You can boot from the emulated Floppy diskette drive, the CD-ROM (image or physical device) or the Hard Disk Drive you configured above.
- Floppy: Boot from the emulated Floppy diskette drive
- Hard Disk: Boot from the Hard Disk Image you configured above
- CD-ROM: Boot from the CD-ROM drive or CD image
More Disks
- You can add up to three more emuluated hard disk drives to your emulated PC. This is extremely useful if you require more storage capacity on your emulated PC, but don't wish to use file sharing between your Mac and the emulated PC.
- Each of the three additional hard disks (which will need to be partitioned and formatted in the emulated PC environment) have the same options as the primary hard disk image, above:
- No Hard disk: Do not emulate a Hard disk drive in this emulated PC.
- New 100MB Compressed Disk Image: Creates and selects a new 100MB compressed ("qcow") hard disk image.
- New 1GB Compressed Disk Image: Creates and selects a new 1GB compressed ("qcow") hard disk image.
- New 4GB Compressed Disk Image: Creates and selects a new 4GB compressed ("qcow") hard disk image.
- New 4GB Uncompressed Disk Image: Creates and selects a new 4GB uncompressed ("raw") hard disk image.
- Create Custom Disk Image: Enables the creation of a custom size & format hard disk image.
- Choose Existing Disk Image: Enables the selection of an already-existing hard disk image.
- Advanced Emulation Options
- Installing Windows 2000 or Vista
Please note that if you are installling Windows 2000 or Window Vista (currently at beta 2 as of this iEmulator release), you should select this option to increase iEmulator's compatibility with these operating systems.