virtualbox.org

How to run Windows XP Mode in Windows 7 using VirtualBox when hardware virtualization is not available.

Migrating your operating system to Windows 7 is attractive to many XP users for no other reason than XP has bugs, limitations and after all...is nine years old. Windows 7 really is very stable and pretty smooth even on four-year-old hardware.

I'm running Windows 7 on a Dell Optiplex GX280 with a 3.4GHz Pentium P4 and 3GB of RAM and it has pretty good performance.

But XP doesn't actually upgrade to 7. Instead, you must overwrite or install a fresh copy of 7, perhaps on a new hard drive. And after installing it, you will discover some applications you used with XP are incompatible with 7.

My older applications like Act! 2008, QuickBooks 2002 and others will not run on Windows Vista or 7.

So Microsoft's Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate include a license which allows users to run a virtualized copy of Windows XP, SP3 "on top of" Windows 7 at no additional cost. This way, you can run your older applications in a real XP environment.

Find instructions and download it here.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtua ... nload.aspx

Microsoft provides two tools - Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode. XP Mode is actually a .vhd file with a copy of XP preinstalled, ready to license and run. A KEY.txt file containing an installation key is included in your C:\Program Files\Windows XP Mode folder.

However there's one very big "gotcha" here which can quickly sour your enthusiasm.

Windows 7's version of Virtual PC will only run on systems with hardware virtualization capability, found only in the newest processors with Intel VT-x or AMD-V designs. Most older PCs do not have this, and believe it or not many new PCs don't either! Some systems have the feature, but you must enable it in your system's BIOS before it will work.

This means, even though your system may be new, and has Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate installed, you might not be able to run Windows Virtual PC or Windows XP Mode. Bummer.

But don't let that slow you down because there is a solution.

It turns out Windows XP Mode's license is carefully worded to allow its use on alternative virtualization products such as VMware, Parallels, Xen and Sun's VirtualBox. And interestingly, these products can open the .vhd file either natively, or by converting it. While these products can use the hardware virtualization feature, they don't require it.

Excellent news!

So my old Dell would not run Virtual PC, but does run VirtualBox very well. VirtualBox opens .vhd files as easily as it does it's own .vhi files.

The only problem I had the first time I tried it was an error message saying VirtualBox could not open the file for read/write. Then I copied and changed the new file's security to "Full" for "Everyone" and bang - it took off immediately.

The XP Mode virtual machine presented itself as an expand-on-demand 127GB hard disk image, taking up less than 1.4GB when configured.

Virtual machines require some special drivers and extensions to talk to your desktop through the virtual environment. Since Microsoft created the .vhd, only their own drivers were preinstalled, requiring me to install VirtualBox's extensions to fully support the display, keyboard and mouse. But that is required anyway when creating a Virtual Machine in all these products.

Sun's VirtualBox, free for personal use, is available at

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Enjoy!

Copyright (C) 2009 by David B. Donaldson, All Rights Reserved
Various products and firms mentioned are Registered Trademarks of their respective owners.

There is a very good reason why the XP Mode base disk is read only. It is designed that way. What WVPC does is create a read/write differencing disk linked to this read only base disk. To run it under a different virtualization system you should probably do the same thing.

Great article! I've been running Windows XP Home Edition (retail upgrade from previous versions of Windows) under VirtualBox under Windows Vista host really well for a while.

Tom's Hardware: Windows XP Mode on PCs w/o Hardware Virtualization - comment

daved1948 wrote:Update:

I would bet the XP Mode .vhd file will run on any compatible virtualization application, on any platform that runs on Intel x86.

Whether or not it will Activate is another question. So if you install it on Premium, my guess is somehow it won't Activate.

I can tell you that in spite of my earlier excitement, my installation of Windows XP Mode using VirtualBox is nagging me it needs to be Activated. Yet the KEY.txt value I received when I downloaded and installed it will not Activate even though I am running this on a licensed and Activated copy of Windows 7 Professional.

I am fairly certain I am legally running this Virtual Machine, following the VXPEULA.txt file included with it.

So sometime this week I'll call the Microsoft Product Activation line and see what gives.

Linux is looking more attractive all the time, isn't it? So is my retirement.

More to follow!

BillG wrote:There is a very good reason why the XP Mode base disk is read only. It is designed that way. What WVPC does is create a read/write differencing disk linked to this read only base disk. To run it under a different virtualization system you should probably do the same thing.

Maybe. Yes. Yes. Maybe.

I think they designed it that way only to enable quicker backups: A user can just backup the differencing disk.
The VM won't know at all if it is connected indirectly via a differencing disk or directly connected to the VHD, and the technology is well proven running directly connected to the VHD.

daved1948 wrote:How to run Windows XP Mode in Windows 7 using VirtualBox when hardware virtualization is not available.

This article is confused. Running the XP VHD does not mean you are running XP Mode. XP Mode refers to Windows VPC's leveraging of MS's RemoteApp/RDC6.1 technology to fully integrate an app running on the guest OS into the host OS's desktop. Yes, the downloadable VHD file is fully compatible with VB, VMWare, Parallels, and even VPC 2007, because (aside from integrated RemoteApp) it's just a garden-variety XP VM, insignificantly different from any other XP VM you've probably got lying around. The VHD is not XPM, and all running it under VB gets you is JAGVXPVM (Just Another Garden-Variety XP Virtual Machine).

Further, just as the VHD doesn't require W-VPC, so XP Mode doesn't require this specific VHD. XP Mode will run with any guest OS that supports the latest version of RemoteApp (which means XP-SP3, Vista, Win7 and, I believe, Server 2008). MS is just providing the downloadable VHD for convenience (and probably to give them a reference point for tech support).

In theory, "XP" Mode can be achieved between any combination of guest and host OSes, as long as they both spoke RDC 6. In fact, even more theoretically, the same thing could be achieved using any remote server capabilities -- something X Server has had since forever -- as long as the virtualizer suppported passing the protocol.

And whatever you do, don't confuse MS's talk of "seamless mode" with VBox's seamless mode. The latter simply refers to VB's full guest mouse/kb integration via Guest Additions. The former refers to the leveraging of RDC 6.1 to integrate guested apps into the host desktop.

Some good reading on what XP Mode is (and isn't):

Ed Bott's Windows XP Mode Q and A:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1461
Mark Wilson's Windows 7 XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC: How it works:
http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/2009/0 ... -works.htm

An interesting quote from Ed Bott's blog:

Ed Bott wrote:Scott Woodgate, director of Desktop Virtualization at Microsoft, told me last August that makers of other virtualization software can make “specific implementations” that will allow Windows XP Mode to run under their platform. So far, I am unaware of any companies that have announced their intentions to do so, but they have that option.

I.e., if Sun so chooses, it could build RDC6 capabilities into VirtualBox, thereby enabling it to support XP Mode. I'd love to see that (though I suppose licensing issues would prevent it from ever making it into the OSE). Right now I have to choose between XPM and my Linux guests, since W-VPC doesn't support Linux, VB doesn't support XPM, and you can't run two hypervisors on one machine.

Nathanael

MarkCranness wrote:I can tell you that in spite of my earlier excitement, my installation of Windows XP Mode using VirtualBox is nagging me it needs to be Activated. Yet the KEY.txt value I received when I downloaded and installed it will not Activate even though I am running this on a licensed and Activated copy of Windows 7 Professional.

I am fairly certain I am legally running this Virtual Machine, following the VXPEULA.txt file included with it.

It's my understanding (though IANAL) that the license allows you to run the download VHD in conjunction with XP Mode only. Which means that, even though it will run under VirtualBox, it will not self-activate, no matter what host you're running it on, because VBox doesn't support XP Mode. But...

MarkCranness wrote:So sometime this week I'll call the Microsoft Product Activation line and see what gives.

...I'd be interested to hear what you make out.

Nathanael