Sorry for the late comment, but this may peak your interest. It’s along the lines of the post.

http://www.vitanuova.com/

@Mart: Yeah, they don’t support XP if they don’t offer if for that model. I mean, it does make sense (why would you host drivers for OS you do not install by default) but it does suck for us customers.

@Travis McCrea: Oh, you mean like Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PC’s? It’s basically a stripped down XP. Unfortunately, last time I checked it was unavailable in retail and only sold via site their licensing schemes.

I wish Windows would build a “light” version (and do NOT tell me that they do, and its the 3 levels that you can purchase it in).

I am talking Windows: OpenBox Edition light

It comes with XPlr (Explorer Light), and the files required to make windows run windows applications. Thats it. (Think WINE the OS).

I would probably buy a license of it… just to try it if nothing else.

@Luke Maciak: Yeah, that’s true. A dual core will serve the VM better, but the killer punch is always more memory.

Yes, one can definitely, definitely use more than 640kB.

Yeah, but that’s mainly because in BIOS, the SATA port is operating on ACHI mode, which is not natively supported by XP. Switching back to the more compatible IDE or ATA mode helps but you lose the benefits of SATA, like hot-swapping.

I find it even more appalling that some manufacturers don’t even bother to support XP for their system! They don’t develop or host the drivers, so you have to hunt the web for a correct one. And that’s no easy task, since most of the time, the manufacturer don’t tell you what chip is used.

@Chris Wellons: Ha! Good one!

@Mart: No, they don’t require multi-core CPU. You are correct. I just wouldn’t recommend running a VM on a single core machine with low memory.

The hardware level virtualization is something I didn’t even consider when writing this. Thanks for bringing it up. I’m sure that the new PC’s running Windows 7 won’t have that problem though. The manufacturers will make sure that the machines with sucky CPU’s will only be available with “Windows 7 Home”version which won’t include the XP mode. They will sell the “Windows 7 Ultimate Super HD Plus Mega Turbo Platinum Edition” which does include it only with their mid and higher end machines.

People who “upgrade” to Windows 7 will be just like the people who upgraded to Vista – shit out of luck.

I wonder if Microsoft is preparing something akin to the “SATA surprise” for their Windows 7 release. I find it funny how most of the Vista machines these days ship with SATA drives which are not sported by XP out of the box. It’s as if they made a deal with manufacturers to use these drives so that people can’t easily downgrade their machines back to their old OS without assistance.

@Luke Maciak: Oh and you missed one resource requirement for XP mode. You don’t specifically require a dual-core CPU, but a CPU with hardware-level virtualization support is needed, such as Intel VT or AMD-V.

A lot of lower end CPUs from them don’t sport these, and such CPUs are usually used to build cheaper, entry level PCs from most manufacturers’ brands. I hope the interwebz won’t buzz with “Y cant my Windoze7 run XPmode!!!111” questions when Windows 7 does come out. :S

“I actually hit a brick wall even trying to explain this idea to some of my coworkers. The truth is that most people don’t understand virtualization until you actually show it to them.”

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

@Mart: Actually, I haven’t really looked into that feature very much. People get excited whenever Microsoft posts some silly blurbs about their “new features” and get all worked up.

I look at these things and go “how nice, our little toy OS is growing up” or I just roll my eyes at their ineptitude.

But yeah – I use a VM at work all the time for testing new software and things like that. It’s great – I don’t know how I lived without it now.

You are 100% right about Vista. I installed it in VirtualBox to mess around with it on my spare time one day and had to activate it. Then after 3 days it deactivated itself. Then deactivated itself again after a week. Needless to say, it is no longer taking up space on my HD.

I use virtualization a lot at work. I’m doing software QA so it really helps when you can “roll back” to a previous snapshot.

Virtualization may not be common yet, but I find that it is quite widely used among corporations.

I like the tech behind XP mode in Win 7. You’re not running the app from within an XP image. Seems like the XP resources are wrapped for the app when you start it in XP mode, so that the app looks like part of the Win 7 desktop. Explains why a user will need to shutdown the XP image in order to start apps in XP mode. Is it possible to start more than 1 app in XP mode?

Oh and regarding licensing, it is a huge b*tch when virtualizing Vista and Win2008. Each time you “clone” an image for those 2 OSes, it will cry for a new activation upon startup. I hate that.