Thanks,

Alan

Bob C

Obviously you only qualify for Windows XP Mode if you have purchased Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate, and yes, although not given to you, the installation automatically has an XP ID and is loaded with a Key for the Windows XP Pro SP3 installation for Windows XP Mode.

However at the end of the day, all it is and achieves is, what “Compatibility Mode” did in Vista and the result is the same! i.e. allows you to run 3rd party XP only compatible programs in a Windows 7 environment that are not compatible in Windows 7 !

This could also have come about because someone forgot to put “Compatibility Mode” in Windows 7, so as an after thought they invented a new method of doing the same and called it “Windows XP Mode”

And the rest is Microsoft Marketing Propaganda and Hype to ween you completely of XP and hope that the new exaggerations and claims of Windows 7, replacing the unpopular Vista and failed targeted sales, will now be recovered in Windows 7 launch, which in my mind is simply a SP for Vista with a new name!

BTW: The upgrade from XP Pro SP3 to Windows 7 is not worth the effort if you have a lot of 3rd party XP programs loaded! Strongly suggest that you check the Windows 7 compatibility of all your XP programs!

Happy Computing Folks.

It sounds like Virtual XP may be the answer. Any feedback appreciated.

Thanks,
Dion

I’ve downloaded the VPC and the XPMode, and I’m also sure that the virtualization is enabled in the bios.
After I 1st start the XPmode by clicking the link on the windows 7 start menu, and accepting the terms, entering the user name and password, as soon as it starts to configure, “setting up Virtual Windows XP for first use”, the process that was said to be not “speedy ” above, the whole Windows 7 just restarts. I’ve tried for at least 5 times and it does the same thing, keeps restarting. Can someone tell me what is the problem?

It would be great if I could get an email reply :sharonskleung@hotmail.com

thank you very much.

Sharon

Is this XPM going to use our actual Hardware (I.E. our nVidia or ATI videocard, sound card, etc) or will it be just another Virtual PC with Windows 7 integration capabilities?

See ya^^

I can imagine that XPM could have a set of more protected interfaces that reduce the exposure, but since the objective is to have Windows XP-based computation accessible on your real machine, I would bet that there are considerable areas of exposure.

Given that, I make extensive use of Virtual PC and have about two dozen virtual machines (different operating systems, different configurations) for testing. I don’t use anti-virus software because most of my virtual machines are fired up so rarely that they would always be out-of-date when I started them, and I always use undo disks and start from a known configuration. (However, I do run Windows Defender if it is part of the particular system — what does it “defend” against, anyway?)

Also, VPC doesn’t support games because MS didn’t add Direct3D and OpenGL support and didn’t supply a WDDM compatible driver with later OSes that works with virtualized hardware of VMs that support Direct3D 9.

Francisco: To be fully covered then yes, you will need one for each. However, since the XP is virtualized it shouldn’t infect the rest of Windows if you do get caught, and it’s easy to reset a virtual machine, so in day to day use it’s not really necessary. Think Mac-like (thou for different reasons): in theory yes malware could be a problem, but in practice it’s unlikely.

Hamachi: Yes and no. Believe you can only run one Virtual Machine at a time, Thus, IE8 would be Win7 and IE6 Virtual Win XP, leaving no scope for running IE7. Fortunately, though the Microsoft Expression team have recently released a free download that allows IE7 and IE8 rendering/comparison so you can always use that.

Oh, according to Paul Thurrott XPM will actually support other OS’s (not sure exactly which though).

Thus, I guess it’s best to think of WXM as just a newer version of Microsoft’s Virtual PC product coupled with a XP SP3 disc image and licence. The new features being tailored to Win7 and integrating the virtualization with the Win7 desktop (so end-users don’t have to run two clear different desktops; although for setup etc they do still exist).

Could I run native IE8 simultaneously side-by-side with virtual IE6 *and* IE7?

Thank you.

That is fairly correct, though IMHO Virtual PC was more like a simpler version of vmware player with the ability to make new virtual machines than the fullblown mature feature rich package that is vmware workstation ;)

@Kulin:
No idea if XPM supports hw 3D accelleration, but you should try vmware workstation 6.5 or vmware fusion (on Mac) 30 day trials. They have 3D in virtual machines…. Much of DirectX9 even…

@Francisco:
Technically, that seems likely/the case.

@Larry Smith
1) Will the copy of VPC 7 be usable with other VMs
It seems like XPM is really a bundled package of a new version of Virtual PC with Windows XP. Ironically, with the name being Virtual PC 7 and everything, this is EXACTLY like the deal Microsoft offered Mac owners before when you bought Virtual PC 7 for MacOS X with a bundled Windows XP SP2 licence that got automatically installed and setup for you. Yet you still got the complete Virtual PC product and could create other new VMs as well, running any OS capable of running in Virtual PC (which includes some Linux distributions with more or less success)

3) I assume XPM will be available on both 32 and 64 bit versions of Win7?
Virtual PC 2007 runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit WinXP and Vista, though only supporting 32-bit guests. I guess it remains to be seen if VPC7 introduces 64-bit guest support however :)

4) Do we get 2 versions of XP, 32-bit on Win7-32 and 64-bit on Win7-64? Or is always the 32-bit XP version?
Given that the product is designed to facilitate compatibility with older ill-behaved applications, and Microsoft are trying to take a clean break with the past in their 64-bit portfolio, it will be bundled with WinXP 32 bit only, irregardless of 32/64-bit of the product itself. However, it remains to be seen if it introduce 64-bit guest support, in which case you can always install WinXP x64 yourself ;)

5) If it’s the 32-bit version, I guess this means that we can still run 16-bit apps (I still have a few old games!), even under Win7-64?
That would be one of the benefits, yes. Its technically an enclosed PC with 32-bit WinXP after all. And of course you can always create your own virtual machine and run Win 3.11 or Windows 98 ;)

That would in turn make Virtual PC equivalent to WMWare Workstation, and MED-V the same but with stream from server (think that’s the Infrastructure software in VMWare world, no?).

Is that correct?

You can always try it in Vista or Win7 by running with the current release of VirtualPC or VMWare.