xp mode on premium version

drmax said:

the only thing I didn't try (and can not until tomorrow) is reboot VM. I can scan back through to look for this, er uh but is there a reboot button or function?

By default when you click the shut down button top right, a Virtual PC vm hibernates, it does not shut down.

See the screenshot below to see how to change the behavior of the shut down button, then click it and select either Restart or Shut down.

drmax said:

Again....I never had any wording associated with a drive, showing a cd available. Just a blank drive letter...on either of my drives E or F. It acts just like when you install a CD in a drive and the drive don't detect it and you could stick that CD in another machine, or OS and it would work.

Put the XP CD to a CD drive, check which drive letter it has. Select the same drive letter in vm settings.

It's 3 AM, my alarm goes off in 4 hours. Good night.

Kari

It is totally OK the Install Windows XP being grayed out when you start Windows XP install program on your Windows 7. it should be grayed out. Your Windows 7 can naturally not be "upgraded" to XP, so when you launch XP setup from Windows 7 desktop, the install option is disabled as the XP setup notices that you already have a more recent Windows installed.

This is how it should look if the Windows XP setup program is launched on newer Windows (Vista, Seven or Eight):

It is not always necessary to understand how something works and functions in order to use it. However, especially when you do not understand it completely, it is really important, a necessity, to read given instructions carefully and follow them to the letter.

It is quite obvious that you do not know what virtualization is and how it works. It is also equally obvious that you have not read instructions given to you, at least not followed them. In my honest opinion you are trying something that goes beyond your capabilities and you should consider forgetting this, as I predict big problems in the future.

However, if you want to give it one more try, here's a simple illustrated mini tutorial especially for you:

• After you have installed the Windows Virtual PC, open the Virtual Machines folder at C:\Users\Your_Username\Virtual Machines. Click Create Virtual Machine:
  
  
• Name your virtual machine (vm) as you wish, click Next:
  
  
• Allocate enough RAM to your vm. My recommendation: if you have 2 GB of RAM on your host, give the XP vm 512 MB. If you have more than 2 GB on host, give the vm 1 GB (1024 MB). Click Next:
  
  
• System selects by default a dynamically expanding vhd (virtual hard disk). Accept it by clicking Create:
  
  
• Now right click your newly created vm and select Settings:
  
  
• Select DVD Drive on the left pane, select Access a physical drive and select the drive that has your windows XP CD in it from the drop down menu, in this example the drive D:. Click OK to save settings:
  
  
• Double click your vm, in this example Windows XP.vmcx, and the Windows XP vm starts, setup starting automatically. Notice that this can take some time, do not panic if the black window stays there a minute or so. Eventually the setup starts:
  
  
• Install XP normally as you would do on any PC.

That's it.

Kari