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MS, Intel "Goofed Up" Win 7 XP Virtualization

Posted by kdawson on from the one-man's-goof dept.

clang_jangle writes "Ars Technica has a short article up describing how Microsoft and Intel have 'goofed up' Windows 7's XP Mode by ensuring many PCs will not be able to use it. (And it won't be easy to figure out in advance if your PC is one of them.) Meanwhile, over at Infoworld, Redmond is criticized for having the 'right idea, wrong technology' with their latest compatibility scheme, and PC World says 'great idea, on paper.' With Windows 7 due to be released in 2010, and Redmond apparently eager to move on from XP, perhaps this is not really a 'goof' at all?"

4 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I hate to ask the obvious by blueg3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The solution Microsoft is adding to Windows 7 is the same solution Apple used for the OS 9 - X transition. Classic was a second operating system that ran essentially as a virtual machine.

  2. How to figure it out by bflong · · Score: 5, Informative

    When running Linux, open up a terminal and run this:
    echo -n "Does my cpu support virtualizaiton? "; if `cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -q svm || cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -q vmx`; then echo Yes; else echo No; fi

    Another issue you may have is if your system has the virtualization functions disabled in BIOS. Some laptops do this, and have no way to turn them on. My Dell D820 works fine.

    --
    Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
    1. Re:How to figure it out by pthreadunixman · · Score: 5, Informative

      You both win the useless use of cat award.

  3. Re:A minor update by Ephemeriis · · Score: 5, Informative

    That suite of applications that you're testing doesn't accurately represent the target population for XP emulation.

    XP Emulation is primarily geared towards businesses with legacy/custom business applications which have not been re-written for Windows Vista/7.

    We run an ancient version of Televantage here.

    The Televantage server itself is still running NT4. The client software refuses to run on anything newer than Windows XP SP1.

    The solution has been to go ahead and update our machines to SP2/SP3/Vista/whatever and run Televantage inside a small virtual machine running Windows 2000 SP4 - it works great.

    This is the kind of problem the XP-mode is intended to address.

    --
    "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde