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Windows 7 XP mode

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by healer

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I have been reading about Windows XP mode on Windows 7. I am still not too sure if it is about virtualization having the whole XP operating system installed on top of Windows 7 so the two operating systems are available at the same time, hence the processor with hardware-assisted virtualization and hyper-threading is a pre-requisite.

Or is it a compatibility mode like that on Vista with which one can install certain old applications in any mode of any older operating systems such as XP, 2000, NT4, 95 and so on?

7 replies

by deadly ernest

system, it looks like, and he says it performs like a poor compatibility mode. he has a number of programs that work in XP that don't work in the XP mode on Win 7, and the ones that do don't perform the same as when he boots into XP on the same system.

Interestingly, when I asked him to try the same programs in SimplyMepis 8 using WINE, they didn't do as well in the native XP, but did better than the XP mode in Win 7.

He did get a better performance out of XP programs on Win 7 when he found a Virtual machine that runs on Win 7 and can run XP in the Virtual Machine - but still not as good as native XP, but very close.

His final answer is the XP mode in Win 7 is a waste of time and space. When the RC time bombs, he's wiping it off the system and staying with a dual boot of XP and Linux.

by healer

You said that Windows 7 XP mode performed like a poor compatibility mode, then it performed better when a virtual machine was found. I had an inkling that Windos 7 XP mode had to run on a virtual machine. I supposed when you ran on a virtual machine you meant you had Windows 7 installed on a computer that has a processor with hardware virtualization and hyper-threading whereas it wasn't in the first place?

I read the Windows 7 Product Guide. It says that the Windows XP Mode is a virtual Windows XP using a virtualization technology. That would be the same as other virtual Windows system such as that of Vista, Windows 2000, Windows server and so on. What so special about Windows XP virtual mode that was specifically mentioned while there are also other virtual Windows systems, I wonder. Do I miss something?

I wonder how Windows 7 works together with Windows XP Mode or other Windows virtual systems for that matter. Is there a switch that changes the operating system over when we click on it?

by deadly ernest

what he did was to install Win 7 RC on the same box he runs his XP. he then did some performance measurements on a few programs in XP, rebooted to the Win 7 activated the XP Mode and ran the same programs, getting a poorer performance for them, and some wouldn't run. Out of interest I had him go find a Third Party Virtual Machine program that would run in Win 7 and do the test in that, and he got a better performance than the MS Win 7 XP Mode. This then lead to a change of hard drives (using another drive of the same brand, model, and size) and the running of the same programs in WINE on SimplyMepis Linux; with the results noted in the earlier post

Why the differences between the Win 7 XP mode and the third party Virtual Machine, I don't know; but I do suspect it's a matter of the quality of the code in the virtualisation process or MS don't do it as a full virtual machine.

The whole issue comes back to the deliberate changes MS makes to have the various versions incompatible. If MS kept all the OS command sets the same between versions of Windows, then any hardware or software that ran on one version would run perfectly on the next - as happened between Win 2000, Win XP, and Win Server 2003, but they change them so that will not happen, and thus they can sell more copies of their new versions of applications and charge to sell people the new code needed to make the hardware and software compatible, as well as charge to certify and digitally sign drivers.

All MS need to do to create a virtual machine inside one version of Windows is just have a set up where it takes the commands from the the application made for the older version and translates them into the commands used in the newer version - which is basically what a virtual machine does. However, in most virtual machine software they have to totally recreate the full operating environment of the OS being run, where MS need only do that for only a portion of it. If MS take the partial approach, a likely case as it would be quicker ans easier for them, then it's possible they may have missed or left out something they see as minor.

by dwdino

I have been running Windows 7 since RC1 and am now on RTM.

Some IT tools simply refuse to work correctly on Windows 7. Some of note are Dell IP-KVM Console, VMware vCenter Client, and a few others.

I downloaded and installed XP mode for my laptop. I then installed the above tools into the XP mode virtual machine and shut it down.

On shutdown, the installed applications were integrated into my Windows 7 start menu.

I then clicked start -> and clicked on vCenter Client. The VM fired up in the background and then the vCenter Client popped up just like a standard Windows 7 window.

Had another user launched the app, they would have assumed it was running in Windows 7 natively.

I would not recommend XP Mode for high load interactive applications, but for limited applications and utilities, it works very well.

by healer

By the way, does the processor of your machine have hardware virtualization and hyper-threading? Did you install all the XP applications after the XP mode was installed?

by healer

I am installing the Windows 7 soon but I believe I won't be able to try the Windows 7 XP mode because my computer doesn't have a processor that has hardware virtualization and hyper-threading. I shall post it here if I find any difference.

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