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Windows 7's Virtual XP Mode a Support Nightmare?
CWmike writes "Microsoft's decision to let Windows 7 users run Windows XP applications in a virtual machine may have been necessary to convince people to upgrade, but it could also create support nightmares, analysts said today. Gartner analyst Michael Silver outlines the downsides. 'You'll have to support two versions of Windows,' he said. 'Each needs to be secured, antivirused, firewalled and patched. If a company has 10,000 PCs, that's 20,000 instances of Windows.' The other big problem Silver foresees: Making sure the software they run is compatible with Windows 7. 'This is a great Band-Aid, but companies need to heal their applications,' Silver said. 'They'll be doing themselves a disservice if, because of XPM, they're not making sure that all their apps support Windows 7.'"
...but didn't Apple successfully pull this off twice?
stop posting troll articles!! :@
On one side, you have the convenience of having an OS thats tested, your apps work on it, everything is good. On the other, you're perpetuating an old system, and keeping people from moving forward. Support nightmare isn't the half of it, you're going to have a very mixed level of application compatibility as well. In fact, the better option might have been a better more robust compatibility function to better support older apps. Because while it's all well and good to say that companies need to upgrade their products, how about the apps that are no longer supported, but switching away from them is no option. In many larger companies it can take years to migrate to another system, even upgrading may not be an option.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
The better it works the easier it will be to support. Also why does the XP instance have to have its own antivirus and firewall? I don't understand why the windows 7 (Magnificent 7? Windows Magnifica!) firewall and antivirus won't be sufficient for the virtual XP machine inside.
This could be very good for support people. Since Microsoft would have to keep supplying patches to XP, there will be no reason to even think about installing Windows 7. Thus allowing support people to the confidence of continued patches.
This is exactly what we want them to do. Virtualize the deprecated, old stuff, and get it out of the main operating system. Move on from the cruft of yore and build in some sweet new fundamentals that break backwards compatibility. We've been crying for them to do this for forever, so let's encourage it. It might add a bit of a support burden, but if it gives us a better product overall, what's the big deal?
As opposed to what, supporting an install of XP and an install of Windows 7? Or Windows XP in a VM and Windows 7?
Just think about it.
When has M$ ever released an OS that wasn't a support nightmare?
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Fear and doubt...doubt and fear.... Our two weapons are fear and doubt...and ruthless uncertainty.
...but didn't Apple successfully pull this off twice?
... Apple doesn't have every IT criminal on the planet gunning for their OS. They are bloody lucky to be in that situation and should IMHO be less smug about Windows security problems in their advertising. On the other hand running the defense grid for one Windows instance was fatiguing enough to persuade me to abandon Windows and become a Linux user and then an Apple customer. I still have to put in work to secure my machine but it is a lot less work than if I was using Windows. If this really means MS is doubling the security workload on each Windows box then.... hell.... I don't even want to think about it.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I'm 100% sure that a competent IT dept that has no use for this feature will, unsurprisingly, NOT USE IT, saving themselves all the support hassles entirely.
And for those that DO need this feature, they know there's basically no other way and it's worth the extra support hassle because they know they will have people saying Application XYZ MUST work I don't care how.
I suspect this means that the old applications that have to work and only currently work on XP can now be moved forward and the IT dept can get everyone onto Windows 7. Once there, the devs of these applications will have Windows 7 rather than XP to test against/run with and they'll have an incentive to update their programs to just work on Windows 7 because, like Classic on Mac OS X, this mode will have just enough 'impedience' that programs will be updated to work on Windows 7 native; but they will work okay in the meantime.
That's the thing - this isn't seamless. It's going to be a little tricky to set up applications to run in the XP box rather than natively on Windows 7, even if launching them is easy.
The trick is "Just enough impedience to get people to update to 7 native while providing a path."
When has [anyone] ever released an OS that wasn't a support nightmare [when it's actually put in the hands of users]?
All better now?
I don't really see the issue here. If the virtual OS is running off of a directory tree in the host OS's file system, then any virus checking can be done via that route. If the host OS detects a virus, spyware, rootkit or whatever being installed (this is going to have to hit the disk at some point), then deal with it via the host OS.
Some of us have been asking MS to do this for a couple of years or longer, and with pretty much every modern x86 CPU now supporting virtualization, the time seems right. I'm no pro-MS advocate (quite the opposite, as my posting history shows, I loathe Redmond), but to my mind, sandboxing via virtualization is the very best way to deal with legacy apps, and with all the potential security holes they may have.
As others have mentioned, with a virtualized XP instance, MS has total control of the virtualized hardware, so a whole avenue of support issues large disappears.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Just leeeave kdawson alooone. Leave k aloneeee!!!!!!!!!
From TFA:
"Windows XP Mode is specifically designed to help small businesses move to Windows 7," Scott Woodgate, director of Windows enterprise and virtualization strategy, said in a blog entry last Friday.
Corrected:
"Windows XP Mode is specifically designed to help us move copies of Windows 7 proffessional and ultimate, as opposed to the cheaper home addition,"S cott Woodgate, director of Windows enterprise and virtualization strategy, meant in a blog entry last Friday.
How would running XP in a virtual machine be any different from the usual windows experience?
It depends on whether Windows 7 can pass-through USB devices and PCI cards to Windows XP. Otherwise, people will try and fail to use hardware with XP drivers on the virtual XP. (Windows 7 uses Vista drivers.)
How stupid are these people?
Windows alreadys supports multiple OSes, from the Win16 and DOS subsystems to the BSD/UNIX subsystem, and also the Win32 and Win64 subsystem.
Which all have their own kernels, and run in NT OS subsystems.
So adding in a VM'd version of XP is going to add to 'support'? How?
The updates still come from MS Update, it isn't like the in house people are writing the patches themselves.
If anything this creates more work for MS, not a freaking IT department.
I'm not sure where to even begin with how stupid this sounds...
More tech support? Really?
If an IT department isn't using group policies and the business centralization and integration technologies of Windows, they shouldn't be using Windows and instead move to something that has almost no central control or mangement like Linux or OS X.
The hallmark of why business CONTINUES to choose Windows deployments is the ease and control that MS continues to give IT administrators, along with their centralized server management concepts that really do make anything else out there look foolish.
A well deployed Windows server/client environment is peanuts to administer, even when the IT people shove Firefox on users and have to run around and do 'manual' updates because Firefox is 'retarded' about allowing remote or admin level updates without giving your users administrator rights.
The second part of this is not understanding the virtualization technology being used. They assume it is like a 'free window' VMWare mode.
It isn't, it somewhere better a VM and a Subsystem on the NT architecture, which is one thing that makes HyperV as powerful as it is.
Truly people forget that NT is a user mode OS-less architecture, and that everything anyone sees is a 'virtual' subsystem, even Win32 has its own kernel and doesn't really know that NT is running under it.
Ok, I'll let people go grab the facts on this crap themselves, and give Win7 a week or two i people's hands that actually 'do' know what they are talking about...
PS The XP Virtualization is mainly for corporate clients, as 99.9% of all software works on Vista and Win7.
It is only the in house written or 'corporate' written software crap that has no concept of NT security that has problems with Vista or possibly Win7 that enforces the 20yr old NT security model that the software developers should have written for in the first freaking place.
If you're going to run virtualized, why bother using Windows 7 as the host OS? Ubuntu can virtualize XP with Virtualbox-OSE, one install away. You only need a license and any system currently running XP can be upgraded to Ubuntu with XP virtualized.
Interesting times...
POKE 36879,8
Neither VPC, Virtual Server or Hyper-V support "running off of a directory tree in the host OS's file system"... instead the virtual hard drive(s) are packaged into nice and portable VHD files... and I'd be very surprised if VirtualBox, VMWare or any other VM software did.
External scanning would require the AV system to know how to crack a VHD (which isn't difficult at all)... though doing so when the VM is online might be tricky.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Why does every user need two operating systems? That seems awfully wasteful.
Because a non-free application that's no longer supported by its original publisher needs Windows XP, but the only OS of which Microsoft is selling new copies is Windows 7.
This is sad, just another example of how the wheels are coming off the cart while careening down another blind alley. I was at a trade show last month, and the visit to the Microsoft booth was surreal. The first kiosk was for Windows 7 and a smiling young man touting the virtues of this beta software. When I mentioned that I was having trouble running Vista on a 3.2GHz P4 with 4GB RAM, a 512MB ATI video card with DX10.1, and a terabyte HDD, he scoffed and said that nobody at Microsoft was running Vista, not even the developers. He gave me a DVD of beta 7 and told me that even as a beta, Windows 7 was "so much better than Vista." I accepted his disc (which expires on August 1), and went to the Windows Mobile (WM).
This kiosk had a good looking young man who was part of the product management group for WM 6.5 and very knowledgeable about the product. When I told him that I was a WM developer, he listened attentively as I explained my frustration in trying to program the WM6 smartphone camera to work. His smile faded as he explained that Microsoft had failed to thoroughly test the OEMs for WM5, WM6 and WM6.1. As a result, the DirectShow APIs for many phones were not fully/correctly implemented. He showed me a web page - http://studierstube.icg.tu-graz.ac.at/handheld_ar/camera_phones.php - that explained the problem phones. Then I asked, "will this be fixed in the coming 6.5 release?" He shook his head and replied, "no, not until WM7." I thanked him for his candor and moved onto Live Search.
At Live Search, a bright young man was touting the performance of their latest version and let me test it against Google, where it seemed to respond comparably. He talked about how his group was trying to get other parts of Microsoft to use their Live Search instead of their own, "an uphill battle." At that moment, another person walked up and asked a question, prompting him to pull out his iPhone. I reached out with my WM phone and joked, "wouldn't it be more politically correct to show this?" He responded, "oh, no. Most of my friends at work have iPhones. It's OK."
The problems documented by Daniel Wagner's web page (above) and unmentioned on microsoft.com or msdn.com cost us three months of development time. I should have suspected; mea culpa. Our application now runs on iPhone, and we are not looking back.
BTW, the Microsoft coffee table looks like a giant iPhone.
So when Intel and AMD couldn't increase the speed of their processors any more, they decided to introduce dual core chips. Does this mean that Microsoft has decided they couldn't slow down computers any more with Windows 7 and is now planning on shipping a dual OS system to ensure slow performance?
yeah, the whole thing reeks of FUD, since XPM was just announced days ago.
Some slashdotters can't be happy with anything...
"Architect" level my ass. You probably get someone coffee. Sorry but your whole post is just ridiculous.
There's no reason for any of your 'points' to stand if you migrate the system to Windows 7.
Why have both? If Windows 7 is a better alternative, then for god's sake, run it. And don't tell me you need it just to have support for legacy apps that only run in Windows XP and not Windows 7.
Because if you DO have those apps, you either need to upgrade them to Windows 7 functionality, find something that does the job better, or just FORGET ABOUT WINDOWS 7 and stay with XP.
Damnit man, this is not that difficult to comprehend.
Why do IT guys always have to blow things way out of proportion?
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
I run Windows XP in a VMWare Workstation virtual machine. My laptop requires 64bit and runs (believe it or not) better with Vista 64bit than any other Windows OS.
However, there are some apps that refuse to run correctly in Vista. So it's a cake walk with VMWare to run XP.
For support - I don't see an issue. XP actually runs pretty damn good in a controlled virtual environment. You get away from all the wacky hardware drivers and shit that normally trips up XP. The problem I see is if/when Microsoft ends XP support for security updates.
So, there's actually no full-on windows XP installation. It's application level support that wraps XP applications so that they work with Win7. Patching, antivirus, etc can all be handled by Windows 7.
Seriously, this sounds a lot better than XP's lame "compatibility mode" for Windows 98 and older that never seemed to work anyway.
You seem to understand virtualization just fine.
I have worked as an enterprise consultant and architect for the last several years working with enterprise environments upwards of 75,000 desktops and 15,000 servers in everything from government to finance servers that link up directly with stock exchances (NYSE, Tokyo etc). I noticed you did not refute the points, but only show your immaturity and inexperience in your response. You completely missed the point that Microsoft wants people to run both in a desperate bid to start getting enterprises to actually roll out Windows 7. My point is that you don't want to run both, that it wont solve the problems that Microsoft thinks it will.
You fail to understand why Microsoft is doing this, it certainly isn't so that a home user can run Windows XP and load up an old game. Microsoft is offering this because enterprises refuse to move away from what is known to work - XP. They obviously think that by offering a virtual PC session of XP that they will alleviate their customers concerns about losing the largest base of available software for any operating system and because it is known to be compatible. They are doing this because people like me are making official recommendations not to migrate to Vista or Windows 7 and they are trying to remove what they perceive to be an objection.
You have obviously never had to look at identifying and testing 3-4000 applications for something as simple as a service pack rollout. The experience you may have with patching your personal computer and perhaps a few friends has no relevance to patching or upgrading thousands of desktops. When you move away from your personal system to supporting tens of thousands of systems and need to keep them up and running through major upgrades, hardware replacements or operating systems rollouts you will have a place to speak.
You could do something like using Linux off of PXE boot and have that host and automatically load a Windows XP session. This type of setup is used in places like kiosks where you have a hostile user environment and need the ability to easily restore XP as needed. This would present a single operating system to the user, avoid license issues, allow easy access from a troubleshooting standpoint and so on.
My issue with Microsoft is that they want you to run Windows 7 on a normal basis and then load a virtual XP on an as needed basis. This put enterprises in the business of supporting two platforms per PC and will significantly increase their support costs.
16-bit apps run on the 32-bit version of Vista no problem. If anything they are just as compatible with Vista as they are with XP since the WoW subsystem and Win16 API is basically unchanged between the two. The x64 version removed the 16-bit subsystem, so one would have to rely on DOSBox (optionally running Windows 3.1) for 16-bit app support.
XP has become a victim of its own success.
There are many people out there who are clinging to XP, and they don't want Vista, they don't want 7...they want Windows XP 4 EVAR! And there is nothing wrong with that. XP isn't broken, don't fix it.
Sure, Windows 7 might 'suck less' than Vista, but that's merely providing the remedy to the poison. Easier to use, simpler, less eye candy.
There's nothing wrong with providing virtualization, and perhaps if they slapped a better GUI and contributing with new features to VirtualBox that might be worth writing home about. (Specifically the braindead ISO image manager that's a PITA to use when all is needed is a combobox for previously saved images, adding an OSX compat layer, adding JIT app translation for emulated binaries, etc)
Microsoft needs figure out what works well and make it work even better, not try to give us something new.
Go ahead stay in the reality distortion field and drink the kool-aid.
It's NOT the contest that proves it. Just read what the guy says and go investigate to see if what he is saying is true.
Just see: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2941
and: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9759132-7.html
Quote:
"With my Safari exploit, I put the code into a process and I know exactly where it's going to be. There's no randomization. I know when I jump there, the code is there and I can execute it there. On Windows, the code might show up but I don't know where it is. Even if I get to the code, it's not executable. Those are two hurdles that Macs don't have."
You don't have to be a genius to figure it out. OSX doesn't have the same protections. It doesn't even have the protections Windows XP SP2 has and that came out 5 years ago.
If you don't believe me, just get the opinion of any of the top security researchers on the security of OSX compared to XP/Vista.
The reason why OSX is not exploited as much as windows is it is the equivalent of a house in a small village. Hardly anyone would bother break in even if the door is unlocked.
There's no point creating a tiny network of zombies. A huge network is where the money is.
If I were a malware writer I'd be rubbing my hands with glee if OSX's market share goes up.
Apple makes cool stuff, but they don't make secure stuff.
That Windows 7 has such problems with XP apps that Microsoft thinks some users will want to run them in a virtual machine says a lot to me.
What it says to me is that the cumulative changes between Windows 3.1 and Windows 7 are now so great that it's cleaner to just calve off a small chunk of your computer and run old stuff in its own environment than it is to try and keep it integrated with the rest of the system. And I can't see how this is in any way a bad thing; if nothing else, crashes in legacy apps should be confined to those apps rather than taking your system down.
In particular, this is a great way of dealing with legacy XP apps that insist on being run as Administrator because they were written without any concept of functional file permissions. Whether or not these apps are good or "should be updated by their publisher" (who most likely no longer exists), they're a huge part of the day-to-day running of many companies. Being able to run them without risking your system stability would, I'd think, be a huge drawcard for corporate users.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Notice that you are not forced to use the XP Mode, in fact, the early reports mention that you have to explicitly install it as an add-on. This means that companies have the CHOICE to either go for a full Windows 7 compatibility track (yes, they should) OR they can choose to support two operating systems until a legacy application fades out.
This is just Microsoft trying to convince IT admins not to have application compatibility as an argument against Win7 migrations, and not requiring to implement dreaded MED-V like, Terminal Services, Remote Desktop XP, VDI solutions just to keep that darn ol' app running. That also requires maintenance of multiple operating systems, and in fact, just as many as there are instances of non-compatible apps.
It would also be better if we didn't need policemen and lawyers, but that's not going to happen either. In any reasonable future there will be computer security threats.