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From: kitekrazy on 29 Dec 2009 13:29
Rick Paul wrote:
> Another relevant experience (besides the separately mentioned checking out
> Toontrack's Superior Drummer 2.2 x64 public beta, which also allows
> accessing my EZ Drummer/EZX kits!):
>
> I finally got to installing XP Mode on my Win7Pro x64 system. The idea was
> to try and get a few old 16-bit applications to run, since those would not
> run at all with the native compatibility support built into Win7 (at least
> in the x64 version). It took me awhile to figure out how to get it
> configured as there isn't any obvious clue once you install it, so I had to
> do a fair amount of scouring the net for "how to" info. However, I have at
> least now got it running with my American Heritage Talking Dictionary, which
> dates back to Win 3.x days.
>
> Here are a few quick pointers in case you need this mode:
>
> 1) You first download and install the XP Mode and Virtual PC stuff from
> Microsoft, in that order. That's not exactly intuitive, and apparently it
> was the reverse order with the RC, but it did work. That requires a reboot.
>
> 2) Once you have it installed, the only thing I found visible at the top
> level menu was a Windows Virtual PC icon, which brings up a tool for
> managing Virtual PCs. That was my initial point of confusion as that really
> isn't very helpful. I later found you have to dig down into sub-menus to
> find the Windows Virtual PC program group, then some sub-items under that,
> one of which is Windows XP Mode. That is the one you want to invoke.
>
> 3) The first time you bring up the Windows XP Mode, it will go through some
> startup stuff, such as configuring a login, downloading updates, telling you
> you need a virus scanner (I.e. "your PC is at risk"), etc. I went ahead and
> got it updated and installed the MS Security Essentials package in the
> virtual machine to get rid of the nuisance icon. Might nor might not be
> critical depending on how you'll use your XP Mode virtual machine. Probably
> isn't in my case as I suspect I'll only be using a couple of local
> applications, but just to be safe...
>
> 4) Once you've got the XP Mode configured, you can load applications more or
> less however you see fit, depending on how you have those applications. I
> initially was hoping to just run my dictionary application from the files
> I'd already had installed on my old XP system, which were still accessible
> on my Win7 hard disks. Those disks can be accessed from the XP Mode, but
> they look like network disks, not local disks, and this caused a problem
> with the specific application I was running. I next tried installing it off
> the application's original installation CD, which initially seemed to work.
> However, I'd configured it in a way that was meant to not need the CD for
> reference, and don't remember what all I did way back when to get around any
> issues with doing that. Once I removed the CD in XP mode, things started
> going haywire. One expected thing was the audio pronunciation feature
> wouldn't work, since the voice files were on the CD, but then the
> application hung in a way that wouldn't let it close down, and when I
> succeeded in killing it and getting it back up initially text was distorted,
> then I couldn't even get any text in the dictionary side of the application
> (though I could in the thesaurus side). Ultimately, I ended up deinstalling
> it, then using the files on my Win7 disks to copy that installation to the
> WinXP virtual disk, adjusted path names there, and ran it just fine. I'm
> still not sure why the installation from the CD didn't work.
>
> 5) At this point I was just getting it up within an XP Window, and had no
> clue how to get it outside of that, which was my ultimate desire. Some
> reading on the net suggested there should be a sub-menu for XP Mode
> applications under the above-mentioned menus, and there was, but my
> dictionary wasn't in there. Turns out you have to copy the shortcut for
> that into the All Users menu in XP mode, then, once you reboot XP mode, the
> shortcut will be available in the relevant submenu within Win7. From there,
> I could copy the shortcut to my task bar (or wherever else I might need it)
> to make it more accessible. The only downside is it looks like a Virtual PC
> window icon, not the icon from the application. You can change the
> properties there, but I haven't yet found a way to get it to use the actual
> application icon. (I can probably work around that by capturing that icon
> to a .ico file and placing a copy somewhere on my Win7 system, but it's been
> awhile since I've done that sort of thing, so I need to figure out how to do
> it. Just referencing the relevant files off my Win7 disk within the browse
> for icons facility did not do the trick.)
>
> Bottom line is I now have a one-click icon that gets me to my
> dictionary/thesaurus program running under XP mode. It takes longer than a
> normal icon to start because it's basically recovering from a hibernated XP
> session, but it still comes up relatively quickly. And it seems to behave
> just like a Windows 7 application in most ways, including use of the
> clipboard, being in its own window, etc.
>
> Next thing is to see if I can get my rhyming dictionary working that way.
> That may be trickier, though, as I think I might actually need the
> installation media on that one, and my floppy drive isn't working at present
> (not sure if the drive failed, I got the wiring screwed up, or there is some
> OS-level issue).
>
> The other question mark in my mind at the moment, once I get another XP mode
> application running, is if I'll be able to run multiple XP mode applications
> in parallel within their own separate windows, or whether the only way to
> run multiple XP mode apps in parallel will be to run an XP mode window with
> the applications running in them. The info I found on configuring an XP
> mode application did say to close any XP mode windows before starting an
> application running in XP mode, so that leads me to speculate it may only
> allow one virtual XP system to run at a time (or perhaps one from any one
> given virtual machine).
>
> Rick

I found XP mode to be pretty useless. The "integration" part at startup
doesn't work and the cure isn't to be found yet.

I haven't been able to drag and drop from 7 into XP mode.

Wise thing to do is to keep a previous license of XP on the same system.

I'm finding W7x64 can be very fragile compared to XP in so many ways.
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