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Microsoft Lifts XP Mode Hardware Requirement

Posted by kdawson on from the marketecture-in-action dept.

An anonymous reader writes "This week, Microsoft published a patch that allows Windows XP Mode to run on PCs without hardware-assisted virtualization. Which begs the question: Why the bizarro requirement in the first place? Was it an honest attempt to deliver an 'optimal' user experience? Or simply a concession to the company's jilted lover, Intel Corporation — 'a kind of apology for royally screwing up with the whole Windows Vista “too fat to fit” debacle,' as the blog post puts it."

22 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. My best guess.... by jawtheshark · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The "weird" hardware requirements are probably due to the fact that they expected AMD and Intel only to produce CPUs with hardware support for virtualization enabled. The fact that one of the major CPU manufacturers didn't, is most likely what bit Microsoft in the ass. Still, some OEMs also are at fault, I think: Just recently I got to look after a defective laptop (RAM module was broken...) and I looked in the BIOS. The CPU could do hardware virtualization, but by default it was disabled in the BIOS. Why? I have no idea...

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    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
    1. Re:My best guess.... by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Informative

      Taking perfectly good hardware and disabling functionality and then selling it a discount isn't new. It certainly isn't new for Intel. Remember the SX series of 386s and 486s, with the FPU disabled, though still on the chip?

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      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:My best guess.... by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The "weird" hardware requirements are probably due to the fact that they expected AMD and Intel only to produce CPUs with hardware support for virtualization enabled. The fact that one of the major CPU manufacturers didn't, is most likely what bit Microsoft in the ass. Still, some OEMs also are at fault, I think: Just recently I got to look after a defective laptop (RAM module was broken...) and I looked in the BIOS. The CPU could do hardware virtualization, but by default it was disabled in the BIOS. Why? I have no idea...

      AMD did. Intel just makes chips for whatever their customer wants. Like how all Intel Macs have VT support, but it's iffy elsewhere (if an OEM can get a discount over chips with no VT, they'll take it).

      As for disabling VT support, it's probably to avoid "blue-pill" type malware from hitching a ride underneath the OS. At least, that's a reasonable explanation if you have the setting. Sonys don't (at least, they didn't use to), which was more of an OEM thing by trying to be more Apple-like in control. (After all, Apple doesn't give you any control in the matter. Except well, they see the need for VT and have it enabled).

      Ironic, too, since Sony and Apple use EFI firmware from the same company (Insyde).

    3. Re:My best guess.... by LiENUS · · Score: 5, Informative

      What about those 386 PCs that had a turbo button that would allow it to run at twice the speed (66 MHz instead of 33 MHz)? Nobody ever turned it off, so why have the button in the first place?

      For older games built for 33MHz processors that utilized the clock rate for timing.

    4. Re:My best guess.... by zero_out · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's very common for Intel to make 6 different CPU chips that are exactly the same, but use a laser to cut a single connection on the chip to make sure it runs at a certain speed. Sure, you can overclock the CPU, but it still has one of its throttles turned down. These chips are then sold for 10-50% less, depending on which connection is cut.

      It costs them exactly the same amount to design and manufacture a 2.4 GHz model as a 3.0 GHz model. In fact, it ultimately costs more to gimp these chips, because they have to pay an engineer to design this mechanism, and buy/maintain the machine that does the gimping. Although, this does mean that I can get a gimped chip for slightly less than the cost to produce it by having someone else pay for the overpriced ungimped version. Still, I think I would rather pay $200 for a 3.0 GHz model, and not have the option of a slower model, than to pay $180 for a 2.4 GHz model while enthusiasts pay $900 for the 3.0 GHz model.

      Not only are you right that this has been done for a long time, but it's also become common practice.

    5. Re:My best guess.... by TrancePhreak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      These days a lot of that happens to keep yields higher. They take chips where one part doesn't meet their standards and disable then, then sell it for a discount. Reduce, reuse, recycle or something. Where do you think AMD tri-cores came from?

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      -]Phreak Out[-
    6. Re:My best guess.... by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nobody ever turned [the speedup button] off, so why have the button in the first place?

      Nowadays, CPU speed settings are most useful for battery-powered computers to let the user trade off performance against battery life.

    7. Re:My best guess.... by Dog-Cow · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's quite likely that this is done due to manufacturing defects that prevent some chips from running at the maximum speed. Testing is done to find the highest stable speed, and it's altered fix that speed as the max.

    8. Re:My best guess.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      All chips in the same family come off the same die. Defects and such make each capable of running different maximum speeds. Yes, some are just gimped for the hell of it but they're all from the same die anyway. Which makes perfect sense, it's not always a scam, some chips just aren't capable of running at the higher speeds. It is pretty much always done this way, it's how CPU manufacturing works (one die, different speeds).

  2. Re:You know what begs the question? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not only does this not 'beg the question' it's by our good friend Randal C. Kennedy of Devil Mountain Software fame. Come on guys, this is in the frigging Ars Technica.

    The problem with Slashdot these days is that has no taste, absolutely no taste.

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  3. Re:seems a bit of a conspiracy theory to me by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Insightful

    On one hand, XP Mode in 7 actually uses Virtual PC, which has been around for a long time - but didn't require hardware virtualization support until the most recent version.

    On the other hand, while I can't find that link now, I do recall seeing one of VPC guys explaining that they went hardware-only for the new release simply because it allowed them to cut out a lot of code, which then no longer needs to be supported. In which case it may be that they have realized that it's a bad idea from business perspective, and put that code back in (and brought it up to date) with that patch.

  4. Re:seems a bit of a conspiracy theory to me by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That was my initial thought as well. Yes, well-written software-only virtualization can perform at a similar level, but if they can get it out the door faster with hardware supported virtualization, they may have decided the software-only approach wasn't worth the resources at the time. It's called prioritization; if they put the resources into software-only virtualization, they neglect something else.

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  5. Randall C. Kennedy by jwietelmann · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/02/21/2329249 Windows 7 Memory Usage Critic Outed As Fraud, Subsequently Given Front Page Story on Slashdot for Some Reason

    1. Re:Randall C. Kennedy by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the editors paid a tenth as much attention to the story as the commentators did, I'll be pissed that they're giving this bozo even more traffic as a reward for passing bullshit off as fact.

      Since they don't, I'll instead just have to remain pissed that the editors don't pay a tenth as much attention as the commentators do.

      Hint for Slashdotters: anything posted by the Exo Performance Network is pure bullshit. Don't believe a syllable without independent verification.

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      Comment of the year
    2. Re:Randall C. Kennedy by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Funny

      It looks to me as if he's just got a sockpuppet he uses to troll people. Trolling means page views and page views means ad revenue. What's the problem really? He was writing for a bunch of IT trade rags, not the New York Times.

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      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  6. Slashdot begs the question by blueskies · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why all the begging?

  7. It's supposed to be disabled by default by CreamyG31337 · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's to prevent hypervisor based rootkit attacks

    https://www.microsoft.com/taiwan/whdc/system/platform/virtual/CPUVirtExt.mspx

      For systems that are destined for a server role (and for only these systems), enable the virtualization extensions. The threat of running malicious code as an administrator on servers is reduced through Windows Server policies and organizational best practices.

      For systems that are destined for a client role, disable (and lock off) the virtualization extensions.

      For systems that might be deployed in either a server or client role (such as high-end workstations), it would be prudent to disable the extensions by default.

  8. Virtual PC blog by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Informative

    Explanation of this decision from Virtual PC blog:

    Why is Microsoft making this change to Virtual PC now?

    Because of you :-) We have heard loud and clear from customers that they need to be able to run Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode on systems that do not have hardware virtualization support. So we are going to enable this.

    Why did Microsoft release Windows Virtual PC without this in the first place?

    There are two main reasons here.

    The first is that we believe that customers will get the best virtualization experience on computers with hardware virtualization support. This has not changed – and even though we are releasing this update I would strongly encourage anyone who is looking at buying a new computer, and intends to use virtualization, to make sure that they get a system that is capable of supporting hardware virtualization.

    The second is that we had hoped that by the time Windows Virtual PC released – hardware virtualization support would be prevalent enough that this would not be an issue. We were wrong on that. Bummer.

  9. Re:You know what begs the question? by Hijacked+Public · · Score: 4, Funny

    I believe I've found the source of the taste drain.

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    "Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
  10. Ars has a much better write up by Orange+Crush · · Score: 4, Informative

    With actual links so you can download the patch to enable XP mode on previously unsupported processors, for instance:
    http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/microsoft-removes-vm-hardware-requirements-from-xp-mode.ars
    Why the hell is this Exo-Blog post being cited? The author of TFA doesn't cite a goddamn thing.

  11. Begs != raises by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The phrase "begs the question" does not mean "raises the question", or "makes us ask the question", though lots of people are using it in that sense. Begs the question means, it assumes the as true what it intends to prove. The Latin phrase "petitio principii" means, the answer (or the answerer) begs (petitions) the questioner to be accepted as true, to concede what is being contested.

    But this mistake is so common, so many people are using it this way, it is high time we start de linking "begs the question" from "petitio principii".

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  12. Aren't You the Pedant by ratboy666 · · Score: 3, Informative

    In common English, as practiced by most people "begs the question" no longer means "petitio principii". It now means "this information begs that a question be asked, that wasn't".

    Of course, we are in a transition. "Begs the question" in taken as logical fallacy by some, and as colloquial expression by others.

    There is a perfectly reasonable expression used to replace "Begs the question" -- circular reasoning.

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