Application compatibility is undoubtedly one of the key reasons for organizations snubbing Windows Vista. Microsoft responded by providing a number of resources to help assess and remediate application compatibility issues; including the Application Compatibility Toolkit and the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit.

In addition to these tools, Windows 7 offers “Windows XP Mode” which is currently in beta. Windows XP Mode allows us to present entry points to legacy applications in the Start Menu or on the desktop that launch in a Windows XP SP3 Virtual Machine. The fact that the application is running in an XP VM is essentially transparent from a user’s perspective. Paul Thurrott has some great articles about Windows XP Mode on his Supersite – have a look at these if you get a chance:

· http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/xp_mode_preview.asp

· http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/xp_mode_beta.asp

As far as hardware requirements go, Microsoft recommends at least 2GB of RAM – and of course the machine’s processor must support hardware virtualization. Have a look at this blog post for details about hardware requirements, and how to determine if your processor supports hardware virtualization: Windows 7 and Windows XP Mode: Can you run it?

I’ve recently included Windows Virtual PC and Virtual Windows XP (both available here) in the current build of Data#3’s Windows 7 SOE. After initially being presented with a Blue Screen generated by vmmnet.sys; I flashed the BIOS on my HP 6910p (it was a few years out of date!) and haven’t looked back. It’s impressive.

Share and Enjoy: