XP MODE - a disappointment and not fit for purpose

[Night Hawk]

It uses a virtual video card if you look in the device manager there. Attempts at simply trying to install the ATI catalyst were pointless resulting in error messages to that effect. That also makes it useless for your regular separately installed games lacking DX, full 3D, OpenGL support.

The first image here shows how that looks in the DM. The second shows the much wider window seen on the host 64bit 7 install over the second. That covers quite a bit more of the desktop then the limited window on the second suggesting something didn't go quite right with the installation.

 

[OEM]

It uses a virtual video card if you look in the device manager there. Attempts at simply trying to install the ATI catalyst were pointless resulting in error messages to that effect. That also makes it useless for your regular separately installed games lacking DX, full 3D, OpenGL support.

The first image here shows how that looks in the DM. The second shows the much wider window seen on the host 64bit 7 install over the second. That covers quite a bit more of the desktop then the limited window on the second suggesting something didn't go quite right with the installation.

Yea, was curious about a lot of drivers and whether or not to install them. In DM there was a few unknown items, right clicking and choosing update driver failed. Also when installing the dell notebook system software, it failed as well. Everything seems to be working, so I'm not sure loading any drivers are necessary.

Can't blame ya though for trying to load the more preferred video drivers. It sure would make for a better vm experience.

 

[Night Hawk]

You won't be able to install device drivers from the start. The yellow marked items seen in the image are for the video, sound, and tv tuner cards installed here.

As mentioned before the one thing you can change is the amount of memory allocated for the XP mode or any other custom install like having Vista on the VPC as well. What suffers for Vista but not seen with the XP mode is access to the host drive itself or any other except for the dvd drive being seen.

As for Windows updates those go right on without problem. You'll notice IE 8 is on as well as actually having both SP1 and SP2 for Vista installed since those are strictly Windows related there. Besides being able to get online and run the old programs you are still rather limited to the virtual drive itself except for the XP mode when using the VPC.

 

[linuzo]

Only thing I used XP Mode for was for IETester because some reason it doesn't work in Win7. Maybe because there was no IE6/7 Support since it ships with IE8. I really hope they get rid of IE6 soon for us coders sakes. It doesn't support half the code nowadays and we will see what happens.

 

[Night Hawk]

IE 7 has already been out for over two years now and would have been included in the updated SP2 prior to the SP3 disks now seen. For those still using the older XP pre SP1, SP1, and SP2 disks like the one still sitting around idle here all you need to do is simply look at your regular updates to move on from any new XP install or download either IE 7 or 8 directly from the MS downloads page seen at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/resultsForCategory.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=6

In fact just about all Windows updates for XP or Vista for Windows will go right on either the XP mode itself or Vista run on the new Virtual PC beta.

 

[raj11650]

Hi all
1) It's as slow as molasses - even on a FAST QUAD 16 MB host machine.

may be u should assign more RAM for XP mode!!!

 

[Night Hawk]

I slapped 2.5gb out of the 4gb installed here without question to insure enough would be available on the latest XP mode install. But I also installed Vista on the new VPC as well. Force of habit I guess!

Lately I actually backed up the first XP mode vhd and allowed it with the updates on to overwrite a fresh install of both the VPC and XP mode on a second clean install of the 64bit 7 once the new XP mode was first checked out to make sure it was working.

When loading the old by the shortcut everything came right up. The previously backed up vmc and vhd was configured with only 1.5gb and works well just the same. That shows it was written to be effective without as much demand for memory unless the programs run on it require a larger amount of ram to begin with.

 

[copernicus]

may be u should assign more RAM for XP mode!!!

i7 system, I assigned 2 gigs to the virtual machine, it's still crawls on occasion

 

[stormy13]

Probably has a lot to do with what the VM is based on,

How much to you really expect out of the old 440BX chipset and S3 Trio graphics?

 

[Night Hawk]

Awwww crap! I was wondering why the fresh install of the XP mode lately was a little sluggish. I only had 256mb of ram allocated! :sarc:

 

[oldman1881]

I think it is not a good vm software as I even can not boot from CD or ISO too. or i may be stupid.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi all
I've re-visited this again -- while it's now better than the Beta mode it is STILL LIGHT YEARS away from the speed of running XP in the latest version of vmware workstation - workstation 7 which will support proper 3-D (good also if you want AERO in a W7 Virtual machine) and will give you nearly NATIVE speed for the guest OS.

Vmware SERVER is also an excellent solution for a small office LAN as it's FREE. VBOX might also be OK too but I'm not sure about running in a commercial organisation. You might have to pay for a licence in this case -- I don't know as I use vmware products.

As I posted initially -- this was a GREAT idea but really hobbled by poor design and performance.

Here are just TWO of the main drawbacks to running this as an everday solution.

1) USB device drivers (and other legacy hardware such as firewire / SCSI devices e.g Negative Film Scanners, CAD drawing equipment etc etc) cannot be installed to the Virtual machine running in "XP Mode".

This restriction of course will also render a lot of perfectly satisfactory older printers totally unusable.

2) Applications themselves do not install easily / properly when using XP mode.

Having thought about this for a while I've definitely come to the conclusion that if one needs these sorts of legacy apps in an office it's better to define an XP Virtual Machine on the Server network and allow users to log on to it either via Corporate VPN or just plain standard RDP.

A little more work but a far more pleasant experience for the user.

(A Virtual 2003 XP server runs RINGS around XP mode and can be used by many users concurrently as well. -- Note that here the Cost of the XP server isn't normally an issue in an Office LAN compared with the cost of maintaining a multitude of different systems).

The Idea WAS fine -- but I think its time has been and gone -- one is far far better off taking a little longer in learning the principles of Virtualisation and then using a "Classical VM" than trying to "Cludge in" some half baked solution which doesn't actually do the job MOST people are trying to do.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Night Hawk]

I think it is not a good vm software as I even can not boot from CD or ISO too. or i may be stupid.

The XP Mode is self contained and loads up automatically when started. For mounting an iso a separate program called VirtualCloneDrive simulates a virtual optical drive there. You won't use that while running a VMachine however.

The one thing the XP Mode has over all the rest is the integrated components support option that allows direct access to more then a floppy or one dvd drive as seen with Virtual Box and other programs. With the XP Mode you can open any drive including usb flash drives.

 

[jimbo45]

I think it is not a good vm software as I even can not boot from CD or ISO too. or i may be stupid.

The XP Mode is self contained and loads up automatically when started. For mounting an iso a separate program called VirtualCloneDrive simulates a virtual optical drive there. You won't use that while running a VMachine however.

The one thing the XP Mode has over all the rest is the integrated components support option that allows direct access to more then a floppy or one dvd drive as seen with Virtual Box and other programs. With the XP Mode you can open any drive including usb flash drives.

Hi Nighthawk -- Happy New Year

Being able to access ALL the drives is really a "Very small" feature -- most "Office" type users are quite capable of using Networked drives so accessing disks on a networked machine is no problem whatsoever for these types of users.

Using older legacy printers / scanners IS a problem which XP mode won't be able to solve in a lot of cases -- offices etc renew their hardware at far longer intervals than home users.

If the only advantage to XP mode is to be able to open any disk / usb drive then that really isn't a significant advantage as to what's available already.

The base idea was to allow legacy apps to operate seamlessly from a W7 desktop -- great idea but flawed implementation.

By using a server you can still create desktop items on W7 which will directly connect you to the relevant legacy application -- with MUCH better performance too.

XP mode IMO now is only of use in a trivially small number of cases and for HOME computers only. For any sort of office LAN using a virtual XP 2003 server makes far more sense and people don't have any troouble using a VPN or RDP.

I've trialled some users with XP mode and the "Classical" vm route via RDP / VPN --- guess what the VPN / RDP route wins by a UNIVERSE.

I really think XP mode won't figure at all in businesses upgrading to W7. Full blown Virtualisation might well do so - especially if costs can be bought done at this level.

Cheers
jimbo