Is there a way to load an application from windows 7, that will initalise the start up the program to work within windows XP mode without actually loading the virtual machine up. So it runs in the background somehow? Is this possible?
You should be able to install the program in the Windows XP Mode VM to have a shortcut if it as in step 19 of the tutorial below that you can run from within Windows 7 to have it actually run in XP mode without Windows XP Mode opened.