virtualbox.org

Greetings, I am very VERY new to virtual box and need some help, please. I have several programs that run on WinXP and had loaded “Windows Virtual PC / XP Mode” onto my Windows 7 computer. Since Win8 no longer had Virtual PC, I avoided it. Now I have a new computer… Windows 10 (64bit) and need a Virtual XP on it. I was told Virtual Box is great, so I downloaded it, but have been unable to find any “how to” pages to make a Virtual XP machine with it. Can anybody please help me?

Be aware that Oracle is not Microsoft, and hence it doesn't have the authority to bundle a copy of XP with another OS - which is what MS did. Installing XP in a VirtualBox VM is straightfoward, but you'll need a setup CD for XP - or more ideally you'll need an ISO image of that cd. You then click the "New" button in the VirtualBox GUI and follow your nose. If you make no changes to the defaults then VirtualBox will prompt you at the appropriate time for the CD or ISO. Actual installation of the OS is just the same as it would be on a physical PC.

Be prepared for the fact that new installations of Windows are often very slow for their first few boots, as they spend a lot of time checking for updates, indexing the disk etc.

I recommend 1GB RAM, 32GB virtual dard disk, and 48MB graphics RAM as being ideal for an XP guest. Remember to install the Guest Additions for an experience better approaching XP mode... however note that VirtualBox is not dedicated to the task of running one guest OS in one host OS, so it will never be quite as seamless.

Final note: it would be best to create new VMs. As far as I know XP mode VMs don't migrate all that happily to the new virtual hardware provided by VirtualBox.

VirtualBox is quite like Virtual PC, if you ever used that, but it is nothing like XP Mode in Windows 7, so don't expect it to work like that. Regard the vm as a separate PC, not as part of the host. You set up your vm, install its OS and operate it as a separate installation which just happens to share things like display, keyboard and mouse.

Thanks to mpack & BillG for the feedback. I was hoping for a "1., 2., 3.," turtorial, but I guess it doesn't exist in English. However I DID find one in French (convenience of being somewhat bi-lingual) which included a link to a iso file of WinXP. If anybody is interested you can read the tutorial here: [URL DELETED BY MOD] If you don't understand French, a Google translation of the page should do. At least I can now load and run my old WinXP programs!

Windows XP is copyrighted software. Can you provide evidence that the site behind that (now deleted) link has authority to distribute XP ISO images? If not then please be aware that we do not allow links to stolen software to be published on this site.

Hi mpack. I don't know about it being "stolen". It is a corporate issue of Windows XP with SP3, which I guess the Computer tech (who made the tutorial) had legally purchased. Several years ago, when I loaded XP Mode to my Windows 7, the Windows XP module was FREE to download - and that was directly from a Microsoft website. But you probably know better.

Volume licensed XPs are exactly the ones which are regularly ripped off. By definition you are only licensed if you work for the corporation that bought the license, so it clearly can't be legit to offer as an open download. No corporation has bought the right to give Microsoft's property away, and no person has that right either, even if they work for said corporation - so I'm going to stick with my original "stolen" label.

AFAIK you can't get corporate site licenses for Windows any more. Win7 and later I believe is always activated.

I have the same problem, to maintain the "old" XP environment on a new Win10 machine; the question is: can I simply use as the virtual disc the ISO image of my current XP C: disk ?
Thanks

All online information points to that not being a legal use of the XP Mode VM.

lucasmil44 wrote:I have the same problem, to maintain the "old" XP environment on a new Win10 machine; the question is: can I simply use as the virtual disc the ISO image of my current XP C: disk ?
Thanks

That would be called a P2V - Google "P2V XP site:forums.virtualbox.org" or see Migrate existing Windows installations to VirtualBox. If your original XP compact disc is a Microsoft disc, not a Dell or HP or other manufacturer disc, you can use that to do a fresh install in a Virtualbox guest.

lucasmil44 wrote:I have the same problem, to maintain the "old" XP environment on a new Win10 machine; the question is: can I simply use as the virtual disc the ISO image of my current XP C: disk ?

Technical note: an ISO image is always of a CD, so an ISO image of your C drive is technically impossible. "ISO" refers to the ISO-9660 filesystem used on data CDs.

As to the underlying question, yes the process is called P2V and it is both legal and relatively easy, but the intermediate format would be VHD, not ISO. Google for "p2v disk2vhd site:forums.virtualbox.org". Also Google for "MergeIDE" on the same site.

Thanks everybody for replies; I actually meant an image of the current bootable C:/ drive, created with Acronis like I did some time ago in order to switch boot to a fresh new physical drive. The reason of the question is of course in order to avoid years of updates and application installs (I have the original Microsoft XP-SP3 discs).

If it's the version of Acronis that can output VHD then you could use that instead of Disk2VHD. A migration process using .tib format is possible, but much more painful than just using Disk2VHD. Disk2VHD goes from physical --> (a virtual disk format supported by VBox tools) in a single step. However VHD itself is inferior so I don't recommend using it: use CloneVDI to convert it to VDI before use.

Thanks mpack, I think this fully ansers my question. As soon as I get hold of the mew machine, I will follow instructions.