For starters... a bit of background information...

VMware Workstation (from Wikipedia.org): VMware Workstation is a virtual machine software suite for x86 and x86-64 computers from VMware, a division of EMC Corporation. This software suite allows users to set up multiple x86 and x86-64 virtual computers and to use one or more of these virtual machines simultaneously with the hosting operating system. Each virtual machine instance can execute its own guest operating system, such as Windows, Linux, BSD variants, or others. In simple terms, VMware Workstation allows one physical machine to run multiple operating systems simultaneously.

MapleStory (from Wikipedia.org): MapleStory is a free-of-charge, 2D, side-scrolling Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game developed by the South Korean company Wizet. Several versions of the game are available for specific countries or regions, and each is published by various companies such as Wizet and Nexon. Although playing the game is free, many player appearances and gameplay enhancements can be purchased from the "Cash Shop" using real money. MapleStory has a combined total of over 50 million subscriber accounts in all of its versions. MapleStory North America (Global), for players mainly in North America and outside of East Asia, Southeast Asia and Europe, has over three million players.


Now on to the main subject...

I decided to take some time and do some research about the possibility to have multiple "legit" MapleStory applications running simultaneously, on one physical machine. Of course, there are hacks to do that, but, I'm no sponsor of them. So, this topic is not about hacking MapleStory to open several instances at once. I am gonna post about how virtualization can give you more legit advantages for your own educational purposes.

I work with a local company that gives services at enterprise level. We provide server and network configuration, migration, and virtualization, among other things. So, based off the experience I have gained at work, I decided to practice some at home. Recently, I build a new computer setup.

I'm showing off my rig so you can use it as a reference for mileage comparison
Motherboard: Intel DX48BT2
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad @ 2.4 GHz (Overclocked to 3.0 GHz)
RAM: 4 GB DDR3 @ 1333 MHz (Dual Channel)
HDD: Hitachi 320 GB 7200 RPM SATA-II
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 3870 PCI Express 2.0
OS: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2

MapleStory uses very, very few resources of this computer, thus giving me a fair advantage here for what I wanted to do.

I did some research about Direct3D compatibility inside a virtual "guest" operating system environment and, VMware 6.x has experimental support for Direct3D, making it my first (and, so far, the only) option for what I wanted to do. I know that there are other virtualization/emulation programs with Direct3D support but, being VMware what I'm most used to work with, it became my first choice.

I grabbed a copy of VMware Workstation 6.0.4 (latest build) and installed it in this computer. Now, once installed, you'll need to install a new virtual machine (duh!) and, the OS I used is Windows XP Professional Edition SP3 (32 bit). I reserved 512 MB of physical RAM to the virtual machine, since MapleStory does take a big chunk of RAM. I decided to tweak the legit retail disk using nLite. nLite is a customizing application for Windows XP retail discs allowing you to delete unnecessary setup software, and to add drivers for your devices, so you can create a copy of your Windows XP retail disc with all of your drivers included. This greatly reduces time to reinstall Windows by having all of the drivers and apps already installed and customized in one step. So, I took my copy and removed pretty much all of the unnecessary crap but, left DirectX 9.0c, as it is required for Direct3D to work.

Once you have your cleaned XP installation disc, use it to install XP in your virtual machine. Voila! Now you have your first "guest" OS installed. Use Windows Update and update everything, install VMware Tools, and set up anything else you need. Now, by default, you can't run Direct3D applications. To enable Direct3D application support, you must manually edit the *.vmx from your virtual machine to add Direct3D support lines. Once set, Power Up the virtual machine and, if you haven't already, copy your Nexon/MapleStory folder over to the virtual machine's HD by drag and dropping onto the guest VM window. Now, you should be able to play MapleStory on your virtual machine. If you got a computer build similar to my specs, you can even clone that virtual machine, so you can have a 2nd virtual machine that will also have Direct3D support and can be running simultaneously with all other virtual machines running. So far, I only cloned the virtual machine once, and with both VMs running MapleStory, including the host PC MapleStory (making it 3 MapleStorys running at the same time), I still am running at 50%~60% of total CPU usage, and 2.2 GB of RAM consumed. I can probably make a 3rd VM and launch MapleStory and run the 4 of them, including the host PC MS, at full speed.

So, you might be wondering, what's the point of this? Well, it's basically for my own practicing. I wanted to get the most of my new PC, so I started thinking ways to do it, and this was one of them. And, yes, I used to have 2 PCs, and one of them was my HB mule, and sometimes my FM mule. But now, with VMware, you can do it all with one physical PC, assuming yours has enough horsepower to load virtual machines without lagging your host application.

Advantages? Less power consumption (you're only using ONE PC). Less space occupied in your room with multiple physical PCs (again, you're only using ONE PC). Less real-world money waste (Building a good/decent computer is cheaper/faster/better than building 2 POS PCs). It's legal (you're not hacking, you're using several virtual PCs, which is legit).

Note: This might not work in every single computer out there as VMware has experimental support for Direct3D. They added the option for testing purposes to see how it works, but it doesn't mean it fully works. And, also, if you have less than 1 GB of RAM, don't even bother attempting to do this procedure cuz, it's gonna lag your main MS too much making it unplayable at all.

Last, but not least, thank you to whoever stickied this topic

This is good for fm hoes who need to train as well o_o.
Well done sir, i must say you did a GREAT job.

I got Maple to work on the VM but whenever I try to open MS on the host machine and the VM at the same time, the CPU usage goes up to 100% then the VM gets a blue screen. The message either says "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" or other times it mentioned stop errors at atapi.sys and win32k.sys. Is there any solution to this?

have a question, Can you also install Windows Vista on the VMware machine? When I installed Windows XP on to the VMMachine on theHp Pavillion dv6000 laptop, I had trouble getting the drivers for the Virutal Machine. The ones I found on the Hp site, didn't work for me. =/ So would it be advisable to install Vista on the VMWare machine?
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Did you added the necessary lines in the *.vmx configuration file? If you did, then probably your video card doesn't work for that. I tried to do the same on a friends PC with a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 and was not successful. Sometimes the VM crashed with a BSOD, and other times it glitched the VM's display.

Again, the Direct3D support in VMware is EXPERIMENTAL. It might not work, it might do crazy things to your PC, I don't know. It worked with my setup, it doesn't necessary has to work in every single computer as it is a "hidden" feature with experimental support. I posted this here as a reference about what I managed to achieve.
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Thank you. Again, this is not something new. I just took the time to check for myself if this actually worked well, and it does work quite well. Although I only use it for my HB mule, others might be able to use it as FM mules, and if they have high-end PCs, they can even have multiple FM mules connected at the same time.

i did that, but when i switch from vmware to maple, vmware crash, and like my CPU usage goes to 100% >.>, i could log my HB mule on vmware, set it up at the map, but when i went back to maple on host operation system, vmware just crashed.

my comp spec:
intel pentium core 2duo 4500E
2gb memory ram 533 dual channel
250gb HD sata 2 seagate
nvidia geforce 8500GT 512mb native memory up to 1024 with turbo cache.
running windows vista as host operation system

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