Lock Windows 7 from XP Mode?

[hplp20]

Is there some way so that you have to provide a password to come back into Windows 7 from XP mode? After logging in to XP mode the user can't just minimize it and be back at Windows 7. In other words protect the rest of the computer from XP mode.

 

[Darician]

Actually, the user can just minimize XP Mode and be back in Windows 7. There really is no way to protect against that because XP runs on top of 7 and if your session for 7 is locked and XP is below that, you would not be able to access it. You can set up XP Mode to not automatically login to itself after it's started though but again, locking the session for Windows 7 cannot happen.

 

[Pusspa]

maybe you can use group policy editor in the XP guest to prevent a user exiting, what software are you using to run XP in virtual mode? because you will need to find a way to stop the user being able to switch out of full screen mode also.

 

[Kari]

The problem is, XP Mode is accesed over RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol). Most confusing terminology here: Your Windows 7 host is a client computer using guest XP Mode in a remote host computer. At least I'm always confused with this

So, the XP Mode is a guest OS running on a Windows 7 host. But in remote desktop service, this means the user is using XP Mode host over RDP from Windows 7 client. When remote computing, you can "give orders" from client to host but not the other way around.

Not confusing enough? I'll try one more time:

Host OS = remote client
Guest OS = remote host

Because of the structure and logics of RDP, you can control (on/off/log in/log out etc.) guest OS (remote host) from host OS (remote client) but not the other way around. Same reasons make it possible to launch applications installed in guest OS directly from host, but do not allow launching host applications on / from guest OS.

Kari