Windows 10: XP Mode under W10? Yes, No, Maybe?

Night Hawk.
Apologies for my dense brain but I have read through your post a few times but still can't grip what your saying *Redface, so to recap a little;
I have activated W10 during my last usage so that means I can do a clean install straight from the W10 ISO ?
My main program is Windows Office Pro 2010, I was not sure which it was, 32 or 64bit. (It was a legit' download from 'software4students' years ago ) As this folder is in C:\windows\program files and does not show as .exe *32 in task manager or properties on any part I am sure it is a 64 bit program, so I think I can only install this on a 64bit OS. ?

If you can install VB into your 64bit W10 in a few minutes it should only take me around an hour or so *Huh.

I will have another read and see if the fog has cleared *Smile

Thanks once again.

 

Since your first upgrade install saw activation you can go ahead with a full clean install and find 10 will be activated upon arriving at the desktop for the first time with the clean install. You simply go into the Settings and when clicking to enter a new product key you are brought to a new screen that will display 10 as being activated. That's how I check up on each install here.

The MS activation servers hold a record of your hardware profile seen on 10 as the Product ID number people seem to confuse as being a new product key when the ffree upgrade activates without any being entered. The activation itself has it's own 8 groups of 5 digits created automatically by MS.

On the 64bit Windows any 32bit program would see a folder created in the "C:\Program Files(x86)" folder not the Program Files folder since the x86 is 32bit. That is where you would look to find the 32bit Office Pro which would have been the 64bit due to the previous version having been 64bit. For anything MS it goes by the kernel 32bit or 64bit as you saw with the Media Creation tool having the two. The other x86 folder is due to the 64bit Windows still seeing 32bit emulation in a form of virtual 32bit working environment to get past the compatibility problem.

For Visual Basic if that is what you mean by "VB" that would be Visual Studio 2015 presently as the latest seen version seen being released in time for the 10 Tech Preview.

 

Hi Night Hawk.

the VB I was referring to was 'Virtual Box' as suggested earlier in this thread, all these acronyms can get a bit confusing.

I would like to dual boot for no other reason than to have my W7 as a safety net, however it seems that you can have either W7 or W10 but not both, and to spend what MS wants for a W10 standalone is not economical or within my budget.

So, if installing W10 64bit will work with Virtual Box and allow same to run older XP programs in XP Mode within Virtual Box that will be fine with me. What did concern me was your comment;

.

Was there a reason why not? I would need to connect by Wi-fi to my home network in order to print as cable connection is not an option.

Thanks again for assisting an OAP .

 

The XP Mode run on the W7 Virtual PC used to readily connect with ease. The connection is needed to see it activate itself. The activation for that is more 10 is now at the moment as far as getting the upgrade on first without any keys involved. Generally you wouldn't spend time browsing from a VM while that can still offer a form of safety as far as malwares are concerned if you happen to lack some other type of web filtering.

Dual booting both 10 and 7 isn't actually any more complicated then setting up a dual boot with any other version from Vista on up since they all see the same type of boot loader as far as the BCD store is concerned. There are other things however like the Secure Boot and UEFI some show concern over. That concerns the installation media for 10 however. Windows 10 - Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Windows 8 - Windows 10 Forums[2]=Installation%20and%20Setup

When going to set up 10 on VBox the nickname for that one the first VM on the main here went without a fuss. But you can't keep it all on a usb flash drive so I had to upgrade the laptop to 10 for someone until either getting a large enough drive to split in three sections one being a back up with the dual boot across the other two for the single drive only laptop. I can always dump a fresh copy of 7 back on there while I highly doubt someone will mind the newer OS going on.

As far as seeing backward compatibility for programs used on previous versions it always seems to turn out that you will get further running the 32bit flavor of the latest unless you ran with the 64bit of the previous version. Vista and 7 were neck and neck in that area while the 32bit 7 could run a lot more XP stuff without the compatibility mode option used at all. MS put a lot of work into 7 to make things work without hassles following the bad rep Vista got!

 

Hi Night Hawk.
As said, my Office Pro 2010 is 64bit and I have to install onto a 64bit OS whether I like it or not. A 32bit OS is therefore not an option. I need to make sure that I can install VBox onto W10 with minimal problems and that I can then install and run XP Mode within VBox.

I also need to make sure that I can print wirelessly from programs within the XP Mode environment running under W10 64bit, if I cannot print then I feel it would be a waste of time even going down that route. ( I would install an Anti-Virus program if needed in the XP Mode / VBox environment ). At present I have this older program running in XP Mode (With its own Anti-Virus program) on my W7 64bit and can easily print from there, I just need to confirm that I can from from W10/VBox/XP Mode/Program.

Once again my thanks for your patience.

 

I've installed VBox on 64 bit Windows 10 and it runs XP (downloaded from here) fine and connects to internet without any issue at all. These VMs are pre-built by Microsoft for VBox, Hyper-V and VMware and are activated for 90 days. You just have to make a snapshot (easy to do) and after the 90 days are up restore back - you can then use them indefinitely.

I've no idea about activating an XP mode image but XP certainly runs fine as a VM on 64 bit Windows 10.

 

Still trying to get the XP mode to connect online on Hyper-V and not an easy task apparently despite going through the old Network wizard and manually configuring things. It was intended for 7 to begin with however as I was pointing to earlier for use on the Virtual PC where everything when that was installed first saw an automatic configuration for getting connected since the XP mode has it's own form of software not OS type of activation without any product key. Later on the Virtual PC and XP Mode were both rolled up into one package you downloaded once the 7 RC builds were out.

That is one of the main reasons for why you can set up the shared printer option. The automatic configuration in the Virtual PC saw the updated network configuration tools that are not seen in the XP Mode itself apparently making things easy to set up! Yet on Hyper-V a Linux distro was able to connect to the web for the first time. That's a switch! *Smile

As for the VM downloads on the MS page there one of the "Select platform" options just happens to be for the VPC or Virtual PC in initials only. Now in regards to:

The suggestion earlier about a 32bit 7 VM if not dual boot was to see if that older program will run on the 32bit 7 where you would no longer need anything XP. You could work with the 32bit 7 to run that while possibly on a VM as well or see a 10 x64 with 7 x86 dual boot. The 32bit 7 has a great deal of backward compatibility to XP stuff that Vista couldn't handle even with the Compatibility mode option. I found that out fast when first trying out the 7 beta builds that stuff that refused ton work on Vista went right onto the 32bit but not too many on the 64bit 7. Couldn't get them to run on the 64bit at all.

 

Wow, from what I hoped would be a Yes or No answer things have got a little more involved. I have a W7 system that has a few problems ( Most seemingly caused by my trial of W10 ) but is functioning just fine, it has my XP Mode with my label program and can print fine by Wi-fi.

I dug out from the back of the cupboard my 2006 XP PC and connected it up, rather clunky and a lot slower but up and running it is, even downloaded some updates *Eek.

So I need to do some thinking, keep what I have, up?grade to W10 and try a clean install, and if that fails revert back to a new and de-cluttered W7 Clean install. or stay with W10 and have my ancient XP PC for my older programs. *Confused*Confused. Decisions, decisions......

posted by halasz

Is the one you downloaded different from the Virtual Box download from the Oracle website? By snapshot is this another way of saying backup or is snapshot different? 'Easy to do' as long as you know how *Wink.

Thank you both for helping me out, I am grateful. However I am more computer illiterate than literate as you have probably guessed! I started with a Sinclair ZX then a blisteringly fast (At the time) Commodore, maybe I should have given up then.....

 

I would upgrade and then try to get VirtualBox to run XP as a VM. You can use your old machine until it is working and if it turns out to be impossible you can always give up and restore back to 7 if you make a backup first.

I think it will work fine - I've run XP virtual machines on Hyper-V and VirtualBox on Windows 10 and had no issues at all connecting to internet.

No - you download VirtualBox from Oracle (Oracle VM VirtualBox), the previous link is for Pre-built Virtual machines downloaded from Microsoft. You need VirtualBox (or Hyper-V or VMware) to run the MS VM.

All (I think) hypervisors let you make snapshots - certainly VirtualBox does. It is not a backup as such, what it does is keeps the disk image in the same state and then saves any changes you make later in another (much smaller) file. If you want to restore it just deletes this (much smaller) file and you are back to where you were when you made the snapshot. Alternatively you can apply the changes in the snapshot to the base image to make a new base image.

To make a snapshot you take the "Machine" tab in the GUI and then click on "Take snapshot" (or press crtl + T). There is a guide here How to Save Time by Using Snapshots in VirtualBox

Me too - I built a ZX80 from a kit...

 

A most helpful post, I am now a little more educated. I found your link to 'How to Geek' also has a lot of info on W10 and its goods and not so goods, so I can run through those at my leisure.

I think I will install Virtual Box on this W7 and try it out, there is good advice on How to Geek so will follow that.

I thought I might also copy my complete C: drive using Partition Wizard to a spare empty drive I have installed so I can then have everything (files) I may need later available.

 

Now that is a very good idea, I didn't think of that. If you can get it working on 7 in VirtualBox then it will work on 10.

A VirtualBox machine when you define it makes a folder with the VM name that looks like this (This is a VM called Windows saved on my Camara SD card so ignore the DCIM and PRIVATE directories). Within that folder is a file called xxxx.vbox (the configuration file), the virtual hard disk and a log directory.

If you get it working on 7 then upgrade (and then clean install if you want), install VirtualBox, copy the whole directory (Windows in this case) somewhere and then just double click on the .vbox file. This will import it into VirtualBox with no changes.

Don't be tempted into exporting, importing or cloning Virtual machines as you'll get a new HW ID in your configuration file and your activation will be broken. Just copy the whole directory as it is.

I run this VirtualBox VM from both Windows and OSX on this SD card and it works fine on both - never needs re-activating. At the moment I'm signed onto OSX which is why the explorer window looks odd *Wink

 

For 10 you will want the latest for either or both VBox and VM Player in order to work properly on 10. Besides Oracle VBox does have it's own site where you can get the latest 5.0.2 version now seen at Oracle VM VirtualBox

As you will notice the Oracle stamp is seen at the bottom of the page there indicating it's direct branch off of Oracle's main site. When first arriving you will see the large download button for the 5.0 released on July 9th. The 5.0.2 notation is seen at the top of the column on the right side of the page there for the August 13th release.

Download page seen at Downloads – Oracle VM VirtualBox

Then no longer seeing "VM Player" listed as it was just a month ago you know seeVMware Workstation 12 Player for Windows 64bit right at the top of the list on the evaluation page seen at Try VMware Workstation Player. Deliver a virtual desktop to your employees. | United States

VMware Workstation 12 Player for Windows 64-bit Try VMware Workstation Player. Deliver a virtual desktop to your employees. | United States

There's no 32bit option to find for this one! while you should still be able to run a 32bit VM due to the virtual environment's isolation from the 64bit kernel in Windows as it would be for any other project.

As for dumping 7 entirely that is out of the loop at the present while the former 7 host will be needing a clean install of the previous there! That was a 2013 clean install now starting to slow down a bit. I upgraded over a temp install of 7 on the second drive for the planned dual boot of both versions.

Now for the 90day VM that seems to be all too typical where any WIndows vm will fail to run after so long and need replacement. You have the opion however for seeing an XP or XP Mode run on both 7 and 10 while still keeping a dual boot going for both versions until deciding on whether or not to continue on with 10 which seems now to be the finally much needed replacement in line for 7 compared to 8 and 8.1! Or you can drop 10 completely and stay only with 7.

That was the VM Player 7.1.2 version of the program just downloaded a couple of weeks ago right after getting 10 on. Now the latest shows VM Player 12 on the drive/

 

A bit tied up with two disabled live-in in-laws at the moment *Sad so not much time to play.
I have downloaded 'Virtual Box 5.0.2-102096-win.exe 114.168kb'. Not had a chance to install it yet though, hopefully tomorrow.
I am thinking of installing a new Hard Drive, 1TB and installing W10 to the new drive and removing my 500gb W7 Hard Drive. Hopefully, if things did not work out I could just swop them over and be back to where I am now, would that work or have I missed something! I may be wrong but I do not think I could clean install W10 and still run my W7 in a dual boot. MS does not allow this unless you buy W10?

 

You have to upgrade something to get an activated Windows 10. Upgrade your 500gb Win 7 so your hardware is registered.

Then take it out (completely and put it in a cupboard) and clean install on your new 1tb drive.

If you take out your old drive it is just a backup, no problem.

If you run 10 and 7 on different machines (or try to upgrade 2 machines with the same underlying license at the same time) then you are cheating.

Probably you'll be OK and it will work but it is against the rules and I'll tell the headmaster *Wink

 

Hi.
W10 was 'registered/activated' when I did my original upgrade so should not be a problem. I would just do a clean install on the new drive and leave my original W7 installed but not connected. I save or back up my data to two external drives so any changes to data could be easily updated back to W7.

I read that you could not upgrade to W10 from W7 and then install a new W10 as well which is why I mentioned I would need to buy a new copy of W10. The way I intend to do it is I think okay as I would only run one OS, and instead of reverting back via the MS feature I would be reverting by way of hard drive swop.

The MS way of reverting seems to cause no end of problems with Task Scheduler (among other things) as I and others have discovered! For me it caused over 50 errors about 'corrupt or tampered with files'