croy wrote:
Machine: Refurbished HP 8200 Elite Small Form Factor

OS: Windows 7 Pro SP1, fully patched

Question: Does this machine have XP Mode? How would I know? In the Control Panel, I don't
see any such thing. Does it need to be installed?

On this page:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down...s.aspx?id=8002

I see two different files offered for download, with no explanation of what the differences
are.

Do I even need either of these to get XP Mode up and running on this machine?


A WinXP Mode file (500MB) contains the licensed OS.
The file should eventually unpack to a VHD (the native
file format of Windows Virtual PC).

A 20MB file contains the Windows Virtual PC hosting software.

The OS only remains licensed and working, in the Virtual PC
environment. And it might not work right in VirtualBox
because the display uses Terminal Server as a display path
for rootless mode.

VMWare, just one version of the software, claimed to handle
WinXP Mode containers. But what it did to the container, is
SYSPREPped it, before it would boot, and that's not my idea
of fun.

So it's 100% functional, if you use it on the Win7 Pro machine
with a copy of Windows Virtual PC installed. It can run rooted
or rootless. In rootless mode, if you start WinXP Notepad, a
Notepad window will pop up on the Win7 desktop. In rooted mode,
the entire WinXP desktop would be shown within a window frame.

WinXP Mode only runs in single core mode, due to the limitations
of Windows Virtual PC as a hosting software. So expect the WinXP
Mode operation to be limited to one CPU core. Other hosting
solutions (where you buy the WinXP license key yourself), those
virtual machines can use multiple cores. There's no problem
running WinXP with six virtual cores via VirtualBox, but you'll
have to buy a license key to run WinXP forever (past the 30 days
grade period). Yes, there are plenty of ways to bypass those
limitations, which I won't address. And the details are out there.
Not really a secret.

If you want to run Win2K Pro in VirtualBox, the licensing
limit of Win2K is two cores, and if you give the VM six
cores, then four cores should be ignored by license. WinXP
licensing works on a "socket" basis, which allows vastly
more cores, one way or another.

Paul