Mike Barnes wrote:
John Rumm :
On 12/04/2012 08:39, Clive Page wrote:
On 10/04/2012 18:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Only COMPILED programs may not copy. Data is - just data. I mean I copy
those freely between a 32bit XP virtual machine and a 64 bit Linux..
Indeed. My experience is as follows.
[snip]

be dead ends. There is a Win XP mode in Windows 7 but it can't be used
in Win7 Home Premium; you have to pay Microsoft an extortionate fee to
upgrade it. Eventually I switched to using Thunderbird for news reading
A few have mentioned XP compatibility mode, so some comments are
probably worthwhile.

Its true that you need Pro (or better) to use this out of the box.

However, XP mode is in reality a complete virtual machine running a
real copy of WinXP. There is nothing to stop you using any other
virtual PC hypervisor (including Microsoft's own Virtual PC) and
installing your own real copy of XP on that.

However the confusion is added to, if you go to MS' web page for
Virtual PC, where it will tell you you are not eligible to run XP mode
on Win 7 Home for example. While this is true, its misleading, since
its referring to the bundled XP mode, and not talking about installing
Virtual PC and your own XP, which is kind of what you expect the web
page about Virtual PC would be all about!

Running Virtual PC on Win 7 Home *is* a supported platform. However the
difference is that with XP mode in Win 7 pro, it automatically includes
the Win XP license required to run XP in this way. If you have the Home
version (or Basic etc), you will need a separate fully licensed version
of XP to install under Virtual PC to make it work.

That's all useful stuff, thanks.

I've no personal experience but I've heard of some difficulties with the
apparently simple Virtual Machine approach. AIUI the virtual machine
does not automatically get access to all the resources on the host PC.
So you won't see your network drives, installed printers, etc, in the
applications running in the VM. I'd hope that you can install them in
the VM but even so it seems a bit of a faff.



You can if the host is Linux up to a point.

I have one 'mapped' drive which is the linux machines home directory
that is there by default. Since everything else up to and including the
local server, and drives a 150 miles way is NFS mounted on that, they
simply appear as as subdirs of that drive.

Networked printers* simply have their own windows drivers to the network.

The sound works flawlessly from host or guest or indeed both together...

USB devices are somewhat trickier, as is the CD ROM. You have to decide
who 'owns' it....

*including a parallel connected printer connected to a linux server.

I cant answer for how crap a windows hosted virtual box is but a linux
hosted one is way way better than you might expect.

I am not proposing that the OP goes this route, but a 64 bit linux with
a legacy 32 bit XP in a virtual box is what runs here. Don't ask where
the XP came from...

--
To people who know nothing, anything is possible.
To people who know too much, it is a sad fact
that they know how little is really possible -
and how hard it is to achieve it.