I realise the implications surrounding the removal of support for XP, but I have some applications that will only run within XP and will have to take advantage of the ‘virtual mode’ of the Professional version of Windows 7 for these applications. However, given that this operating system is within Windows 7 would it still be as vulnerable as a stand alone XP system once the support is removed?
Windows XP mode is a virtual machine running on Windows Virtual PC. As any virtual machine running on any virtualization platform it is and behaves like any other machine, real physical one or virtual, in your network. It is irrelevant what the host system is, your Windows 7 has nothing to do with XP Mode's security, for XP Mode the host system is just another computer.
What this means is that XP Mode (as any vm) needs its own AV solution and firewall. The antivirus program or any malware or other protection installed and working on your host (Windows 7 in this case) does not protect the guest (XP Mode) in any way. The virtual machine needs its own AV, malware and intrusion protection.
In this post a few tips to make XP Mode safer.
Kari
Last edited by Kari; 18 Mar 2014 at 08:10. Reason: Fixed some typos
Thanks for that, I've now applied the changes as outlined in the link.
I should add that there is just one program of any importance that I use that will only work in the XP environment; Dreamweaver MX 2004. I do intend getting the latest version, but it’s going to take me some time (and money) to complete the change over, so in the mean time I have no choice but to continue using what I have. Even though DW in located in drive C of XP, the DW files are actually stored in ‘My Documents’ of Windows 7 ‘C’ dir and are accessed from there when I am working on the files. So if I go ‘off line’ while working and editing within XP, I just need go on-line to upload changed files which usually takes about 30 seconds. I would have thought that the threat would be minimal in this case. What do you think?
I do have AVG Internet Security installed on Windows 7 and within Virtual XP Mode.
That sounds good, storing your work data on host Seven instead of guest XP. I see no issues with your setup.
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