XP Compatibility Mode in Windows 7
For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.
of all of the legitimate reasons I have heard why people and organizations have not upgraded to Windows Vista application compatibility has been a big one. I have been telling people for years that this is because of the improved security features, and that ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) were going to have to program around the hardened security. As it happens they have been, but none of that is relevant if you have a piece of software sitting on your shelf that doesn’t work. At http://talkingaboutwindows.com/archive/2009/04/17/mitch-garvis.aspx I said that end users don’t care why their applications don’t work or who or what is to blame… they just want it to work.
Enter Windows XP Mode in Windows 7. This feature was released with the Release Candidate of Windows 7 a few weeks ago, and the buzz has been incredible. In short, with Windows 7 you have a virtual PC running Windows XP; you can install your applications on that XP machine (No additional license is required) and then as if by magic you can run those applications on your Windows 7 machine.
I have one set of applications that never ran on Windows Vista; the Readiness Review Suite that came with Microsoft Press Self-Paced Training Kit books for Windows 2003 never ran on Vista, and because of that I always had a Windows XP virtual machine on my laptop. In order to run the application I would have to run Virtual PC 2007, spin up the Windows XP machine, log on and run my app. There was no interconnectivity between that VM and my desktop.
As you can see I have installed it on the Windows XP VM on Windows 7 (Microsoft Press Readiness Review Suite). Let’s be clear… I can run it here if I want. Or I can look in my Windows 7 Programs and see the following:
All Programs – Windows Virtual PC – Virtual Windows XP Applications – Microsoft Press Readiness Review Suite.
I have not done any custom configuration here… the only thing I have to do is install my application within XP so that the icon is under the All Users profile, which is why Internet Explorer icons do require their own tweaking (by default they are installed per user). Why would I need this, you ask? You may have HTA applications that still need Internet Explorer 6.0, and rather than trying to install that onto Windows 7 you can simply leverage XP mode.
Another benefit of XP Mode is one you will be seeing in the next version of Virtual PC… it supports USB devices, both within the VPC and within XP Applications.
XP Mode does have a few requirements that you should be aware of. For one thing your CPU must support hardware virtualization. That means that you also have to enable hardware virtualization in the BIOS. Brad et al, make sure your CPU supports either Intel-VT or AMD-V before trying :)
Secondly the XP machine requires 256 Megabytes of RAM which will be taken from the total… so if you have memory issues beware. Also you should make sure you can comfortably allocate 16 gigabytes of hard disk space to the VPC, and more depending on what you are storing therein.
I find it convenient that physical drives and partitions on the host computer are immediately available in the guest OS. They are viewed as network drives, so it is easy to port content between the two.
It is important to remember that even if you are only loading the Virtual PC to install the applications, and then running the applications from within Windows 7 you are still running a second PC, and security considerations such as patch management and virus protection must still be run on both the host and the guest PC. Remember one of Mitch’s Rules of Virtualization: What must be done in the host must also be done in the guest. If you are a consultant supporting clients who will be using this remember that their SLAs (Service Level Agreement) might have to be revised to increase the scope.
XP Mode is not built into the RC of Windows 7, but it is a free download. Click on this link and follow the instructions: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx.
For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.
Read the complete post at http://mitchgarvis.com/blogs/mitch/archive/2009/05/18/xp-compatibility-mode-in-windows-7.aspx