Is it worth creating XP mode in windows 7

Duzzy · 31 Jan 2012

One important thing I forgot to mention and that is whichever virtual machine you use you'll need to go into the BIOS and enable hardware virtualization under the Power settings otherwise your virtual PC won't work.

Thank you for the information concerning the BIOS and virtual PC. However, several months ago I downloaded this software without making any changes to the BIOS. This is the first time that I have heard about it. However, all is well so I will leave it as it.

I believe MS Virtual PC and XP Mode originally worked only with Hardware Virtualization enabled but it has been updated to work without it. I use XP Mode and my CPU doesn't have any Hardware Virtualization. I guess it would work better with Hardware Virtualization.

If you wanted to run a 64bit OS in a Virtual PC then Hardware Virtualization is required. Don't bother trying this with MS Virtual PC as it will not run a 64bit OS, VMWare Workstation and VMWare Player do.

pparks1 · 31 Jan 2012

seavixen32 said:

Thanks for that Jimbo.

As a matter of interest, how much better is WMWare Workstation 8 than the free VMWare Player?

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As Jimbo stated, it just adds some feature that you may or may not need. In my enterprise environment, we use vsphere and ESXi...but for my personal playing and testing, the VMWare Player is perfectly fine for my needs.

I wish it had a snapshot ability, but I work around that easily enough. Whenever I need to do something that needs a point to get back to, I simply shut down the VM, copy the .vmdk to a backup folder and then run my tests. If I need to revert back, I shut down the VM again and restore the copy of my backup. It's a bit manual, but it saves me the nearly ~$200 that VMWare Player costs.

pparks1 · 31 Jan 2012

hummer7 said:

Is there a way to bypass the username and password bottleneck?
Otherwise, I got to start over again from the scratch.

Launch the VM and log in. Go into Start, cmd, type
control userpasswords2

Unchceck the box that says "Users must enter a username and password to use this computer.

Reboot and you should automatically jump right to your desktop when you boot up.

Joan Archer · 02 Feb 2012

I'm another that never touched the BIOS when I installed XP Mode, I run it on the Microsoft Virtual machine. Still haven't been able to make the thing work that I wanted the XP Mode for in the first place.

hummer7 · 06 Feb 2012

Kari;1770041
VMWare Player's notification area shows you all connected external devices. Mouse over shows the name of the device, green dot on device icon shows it is attached to guest:

[ATTACH said:

195698[/ATTACH]

Right click device, for instance your USB stick needed to copy your encryption application to XP Mode to attach it to guest. Notice that this also releases device from host:

Attachment 195697

Kari

I got a new C-hard drive for my office computer. The computer runs Windows 7 pro (64 bit). XP Mode and VMWare player 3.1.5 were installed without any hitch. Restarted the computer. XP mode was succesfully imported by VMWare player.
Meanwhile, screen prompted to update VMWare Tools. Downloading of the VMWare Tools goes on forever (see one of the attachments below). I am not sure whether downloading is going or not. I am now stuck at this stage. One of the attachments is from MY Computer. Nothing seems to be changed.

I assume that without installing VMWare Tools I might be not able to run XP mode. I am wondering whether something is missing to successfully download VMWare Tools. Please advise me.

seavixen32 · 07 Feb 2012

You may find this PDF help file useful: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware-too...figuration.pdf

pparks1 · 07 Feb 2012

Without VMWare Tools, your XP machine will work, but the video won't be optimized and performance won't be as good as it can be.

Go into VMWare Player, File, Player Preferences, click on Connection Settings and make sure that everything is setup properly.

I've not had this hang at this point, but as I said before, there were problems with 4.0.2 getting updates...but that would throw a message. I'm currently on 3.1.3 on one of my machines and 4.0 on the other. If I get a few minutes, maybe I will try installing 3.1.5 and see if I have any issues.

hummer7 · 07 Feb 2012

pparks1 said:

Without VMWare Tools, your XP machine will work, but the video won't be optimized and performance won't be as good as it can be.

Go into VMWare Player, File, Player Preferences, click on Connection Settings and make sure that everything is setup properly.

I've not had this hang at this point, but as I said before, there were problems with 4.0.2 getting updates...but that would throw a message. I'm currently on 3.1.3 on one of my machines and 4.0 on the other. If I get a few minutes, maybe I will try installing 3.1.5 and see if I have any issues.

Thanks for yuur suggestion. In the morning, I did not see any posting. So I tried to solve the problem myself. As you described, the problem has to do with conneciton. Default setting was Proxy. I changed into into Windows Proxy and checked its connection. Voila! It started to download VM tools and installed. Now, VM player works very well.

The screen prompted to update v. 4.01 (ror 4.02, I do not recall). it is auto-downloading it. I had problem with downong the v. 4. I rebooted the comuter and VM player restarted. Downlooading is in progreass now. I will let you know how it goes. Thanks for all your help.

hummer7 · 07 Feb 2012

Installation of VMware player and VM Tools was performed without much problem. I had a problem with auto-downloading VMP 4.01. (note: I exptected to get 4.02 though). Dowloading was stalled somehow twice. I made it for the third time and installed vm tools again. VM Player 4.01 runs flawlessly. I can see and access to My Documents, hard drives, flashdrives and and DVD/CD drive. I was able to install winXP-specific software in XP mode, All are great. Thanks for all your help.

seavixen32 · 07 Feb 2012

That's great news.

I'm pleased you got where you want to be and thanks for the update.