Windows 7 - a good VM?

Is there a VM that will work reasonably flawlessly...that has support for USB devices including printers and external hard drives and actually will give me access to older apps that cannot run on Windows7 without so many problems I spend more time tweaking the settings or fiddling with the VM than actually using the apps?

That might, in other words make migrating from XP to Windows 7, if not pleasant at least painless (or vice versa).

Win 7 Pro has its own VM for XP but VMWare Player works well although I have not tried it with XP. VMware Player: Run Windows 7, Chrome OS - Free Download for a Virtual PC

Thank you for responding.

the reason I ask is that I have two machines. One is an XP machine and the other is a Win7x64 Pro. I migrated a lot of my XP apps (or tried to)to the Windows 7 machine when I first got it. Many such as Wordperfect and Microsoft Access wouldn't work.

So I downloaded and installed a VM. I think it was VMlite.

There was a lot to recommend this VM but I never could get it so see and initialize the printer (USB) consistently...sometimes it would work sometimes it would not...and this seemed the case with all the USB posts.

After waiting for promised upgrades and fixes, eventually I just gave up, uninstalled the whole thing, and bought new apps to replace my legacy apps.

But legacy macros won't work in the new software and...well, I won't list the catalog of frustrations.

Long and short of it, I'd like to upgrade the XP machine to Windows 7 but I really don't want to loose access to my old apps or have the same sort of hassles and disappointments I encountered first time around with a VM.

Is VMWare ready for prime time right out of the box?

VMWare Player is a good and easy to use VM manager. I would recommend it although as I said I have not used it for XP.

I presume that you have tried the compatibility options for your XP programs? You may also need to run the installer in compatibility mode.

Considering that VMWare is 1 of the pioneers in the virtualization field, I would say they are ready for prime time. They released their first version of VMWare Workstation in 1999. They are nearly the defacto standard for enterprise class virtualization with their vSphere product line.

VMWare Player is the product that I use for my desktop virtualization needs. I don't have a need to pay for the VMWare Workstation product. For my production work needs, we use a mix of their free ESXi hypervisor and licensed copies of vCenter server with shared SAN space so we can use features like HA, DR, vMotion and Storage vMotion.

To run a VM Flawlessly with Mouse integration, USB working ,network working and Guest -Host file sharing, it is to install the vmware tools in the guest OS .

. In VMWare Player they are automatically installed by the VM creation wizard if the guest OS is recognized (XP is).

I uninstalled VMLite from my Windows 7 machine some time ago. I can find no vestiges of it although there may be a registry entry.

Do you think I could download and install VMPlayer and run XP in it without any leftover conflicts between it and the previous VM?

I would think so. It's just another program. I run it and VirtualBox on my PC

Whats this business about having to activate virtual machines in the bios? I never had to do that with my Windows 7 machine.

Do computers with newer processors come with the bios setting automatically turned on?