XP Mode: Customization, Firewall, etc.

[HughShaw]

Hello, I was wondering if we would be able to customize XP mode with Vista themes, etc.

Also, would we also need to install a separate firewall & antivirus if we were to download and install programs?

 

[Kari]

Hello Hugh and welcome to the SevenForums.

You can use themes and styles in XP Mode normally like it were a real XP computer. Only limitation is that XP Mode uses emulated GPU, some visual effects don't work.

A virtual machine is not protected by the host systems firewall and antivirus applications. It needs its own protection.

Kari

 

[HughShaw]

Thanks for your reply, Kari!

That means that we will all need to run 2 firewalls and 2 anti-viruses at the same time. Has anybody experienced any slowdown with this? (I plan on using XP mode a lot for my old 32 bit applications)

 

[Kari]

I'm using XP mode all the time for some business applications that are not Windows 7 compatible. I have a separate firewall / antivirus on XP Mode. Of course it uses some resources so a bit digging to find a suitable suite is needed. I am using AVG.

However, I have noticed it's clever to put some extra RAM on you host machine and then allocate enough of it to XP Mode. I've given 2 GB to XP Mode, it seems to be enough for XP to smoothly run on the background, doing what I want it to do.

Kari