Windows 7 on Windows XP
Archives Forums/Win32 Discussion/Windows 7 on Windows XP
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| There is some program that lets you install a virtual windows XP operating system Windows 7, the idea is to test what I do on both Windows 7 and Windows XP. |
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| VMware, Virtualbox, Proxmox ... There are several available just google for virtualization. If you don't need a server version most of them are free, but for the guest virtual system you will need your license key. |
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| Beware that those VM are useless for testing games, since they don't use hardware acceleration. |
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| Actually VirtualBox has 2d and 3d acceleration for windows os. And VirtualBox is free. |
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| Thanks!! |
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| For future reference for folks, Windows 7 has the option to use XP Mode which is a full install of XP under a VM. Last edited 2012 |
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| For future reference for folks, Windows 7 has the option to use XP Mode which is a full install of XP under a VM. Yes, it's based on Microsoft Virtual PC and has a couple of disadvantages over using a third party solution like VMWare, Parallels or VirtualBox - the lack of 3D support is one of them. Also, the last time that I used it, "XP Mode" also could not even shut down a VM, it only hibernated it. On the plus side of things, "XP Mode" does not require the user to buy additional software licenses for XP and the virtualization software. |
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| This is called Windows XP Mode. Get it while stocks last. |
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| I think the cheapest and best solution is to just keep an old XP machine lying around. Normally I can pick up fully working machines from $20 or $40 bucks. After a good dust cleaning and fresh OS install your good to go! Look for old Dells or IBM machines ideally. Try to stay away from anything Emachine or Acer unless they're really clean. |
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| Another option is a dual boot machine, where you can select the OS upon boot time, and get the benefit of full hardware acceleration and such. Unfortunately, in order to do so you'd need to partition your harddrive into two chunks (one for each OS), and even more unfortunately you'd need to install XP first, and Windows 7 second in order for them to play nice with one another. Which means you'd need to wipe the harddrive in order to do so, and need the (re)-installation media and activation keys for both operating systems |
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