If you're having trouble setting up XP mode in 7 Pro, this might help.

Just got Windows 7 Professional, and looking into using virtualisation for XP, just out of curiosity really. Lots of peeps having trouble, particularly those with older machines where virtualisation is not available in the BIOS. Many currently dual boot. This might be of use to some.

I dual boot 7 64bit and XP 32bit on physically separate hard drives. I have been refused installation of some programs by win7 occasionally, but have been able to install them in XP. I don't often boot into XP, but I don't often need to in order to run those programs. I discovered that, while in 7, I can navigate to the XP drive's Program Files folders, find the relevant .exe file, double-click it, and the programs run happily. This has worked with all the programs I've tried it with, including Pagemaker 6.5 which is very old (1995 is the oldest file Date stamp), and several games. I suppose it's just like having a Portable program, one that doesn't require installation. I haven't come across any problems, but I suppose there might possibly be some limit to a program's functionality, due to the Registry not being consulted. Of course, if the program consults a setup/preferences .ini file, as many older programs did, the Registry might be irrelevant anyway.

If it works for you, just bung a shortcut to it on your Windows 7 Desktop, and you don't even have to do the navigation again.

Just an idea,and it might be a useful stop-gap while sorting it all out.

The Microsoft havdetectiontool tells me virtualisation has been disabled on my computer, which, according to Microsoft means it is capable, though I can find nothing in the BIOS that refers to it, or might refer to it. But as long as the above keeps working, I'm not really bothered, and I haven't booted into XP for ages.

For those programs that install in XP but are then able to run in 7, have you tried to run the installer in XP compatibility mode in order to install them in Win 7? It may be that just the installer is not Win 7 compatible.

It seems unusual for programs installed in your XP partition to be runnable in Win 7 simply by double-clicking on the relevant .exe since the Win 7 machine won't have the configuration info in it's registry for that program and a different set of dlls in it's system32 folder.

Hidy strollin, Well tis true. Never given the opportunity. Immediately upon attempting to install received the message...

"The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your..." and then about whether I needed... "32 bit or 64 bit..." "contact publisher."

Not unusual for me, been doing it as long as I've been dual booting; about 5 years. First with 7 Home Premium, and now with 7 Pro.

Try it.

Don't forget, I used these programs originally with Windows 98, so their age is against them. Also, as I said, they are old enough to function with just an ".ini" file for setup. So the registry may not be relevant, as I said.