Windows 10: In-place upgrade - XP to 10 without losing the apps

Let us know if you have any issues.

Thanks Jimbo. Almost a year since last post in this thread before today's entries, good to know that an old thread can still be interesting.

 

Of course you're interesting Kari...ooops, my bad, an old thread can still be interesting *Wink

 

Hi there

@Kari

If you want to play a bit with something quite interesting - I'm not sure if I can be done with HYPER-V but with VMware you CAN run a 64 Bit GUEST on a 32 Bit HOST !! provided you enable the VT feature in the CPU BIOS - INTEL or AMD equivalent -- I think newer machines have this enabled anyway.

I think this can even be done on a 32 bit machine - although I can't test that as I don't have an old enough machine any more - the VT switch though must still be enabled -- if it doesn't have that feature then you can't run a 64 bit Guest with VMWARE or VBOX either.

Limitation is HOST + VM RAM must be <4GB) -- doesn't matter though if Host machine has MORE than 4GB RAM - it won't use it.

So I'm going to test running a 64 bit W10 PRO VM on an XP Host. allocate 2GB RAM for the W10 VM - that's enough to get it working.

I'll test it first in an XP VM and run the W10 Guest as a second level VM within the XP VM --this might not work because of the VT feature - not sure if this is carried through into the Virtual BIOS from the HOST.

Should work on the HOST though - although difficulty might be finding some XP video drivers -- still should be interesting !!!!

You have to use an OLD version of VMWARE player / workstation as newer versions have to be installed on a 64 bit Host. Old versions are still around on the web though - VMware player is FREE so should be no problem in finding a suitable 32 bit version.

I've also got a W2K3 server system available -- that might be more feasible as W2K3 server was maintained for quite a while after XP itself ended having support. XP was based on W2k3 server which was really robust for its time --that's probably why XP lasted so long as it was a great OS in its day.

Will post later to show results.

Cheers
jimbo