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

Why not??? On the second build I use as a remote tower I put a clean install of 10 along with the existing 7 Pro install and then upgraded over the 7 Pro install to see both the upgrade and clean install activated. Later I tossed one of the 1tb storage drives pulled from the main build as the new second OS drive for the second case. When nuking the upgrade over 7 in favor of keeping the clean install and moving the primary forward 10 lost the boot info and needed to see a second clean install once that primary was grown to take up the slack left behind when nuking the first primary.

The original(get this) 2010 system image made of 7 Pro was then restored to the second larger drive and shrunk down a bit to see a second back up partition for the mini tower First drive 500gb and second just added in 1tb in size as the other sits in a usb enclosure where the drive that had been there is now internal on the main along with a new 2tb drive for storage. Some fast drive swapping no less while both systems see dual boots of 7 with 10!

I'm not planning to dump 7 for as long as it runs or 2020 arrives at least! I invested in all three versions back when 7 was new and eventually may see an upgrade take place on a second mini tower I provided a sibling with who still needs to see that IE connection replaced or restored somehow however. The upgrade from dial-up first seen until the phone company batched the phone line where that person lives is a pain! *Rolleyes and needs to see cable or dsl not satellite! Get charged by the web page! *Eek

 

My upgrade plans have gone out the window for the time being, so my apologies to both of you for not seeing a positive result - as yet! Your help and useful advice is very much appreciated and given me ideas and suggestions to think about. *Smile
This could be a very extended upgrade but I do have until next year to sort it out if going to W10. I know MS give you a year to upgrade but I am not sure what the start date was!

Our even older disabled live-in in-laws are having problems so my time is limited at present. My wife and I are both pensioners ourselves, so not much fun for us. *Sad

If your subscribed to this thread I will reply with any updates.

 

No need to rush - the free upgrade expires at the end of next June but as you've already done an upgrade and activated 10 there is no limit. You can do a clean install at any time as long as your PC lasts. All the best, Hali

 

One thing you may want to consider for the moment is simply downloading and saving the 10 iso file to a folder to have that taken care of in the meantime. Or you can at least seen the media made up until you have decided on which route to take.

In the meantime for being able to keep the older version of Sibelus going as well as the 64bit flavor of XP Pro you can see that set up on a second drive in order to see a dual boot with 7 for the time being. The Hyper-V feature will support the XP Mode in 10 without any problem as far as seeing it run. But the problem I ran into was being able to get it to connect online in order to see the activation take place here. I might need to find a way to add in an exception due to the av program's firewall however which might be stalling the works?

And of course following the upgrade install of 10 the other option for dual booting would be a 10/7 dual and still keeping the XP Mode going on a fresh 7 install either on the SSD split which doesn't give you a lot of room there or see that go on the second drive right before seeing the clean install of 10 on the SSD.

The SSD would be unplugged long enough to see 7 rather then XP go onto the second drive to see the stand alone install followed by replugging the SSD back in for the 10 install. Once done the other drives are plugged back in. Note you only need to unplug the 7 pin data cable if those are Sata type drives or the ribbon if EIDE in order to isolate them. It's actually more of an inconvenience to be leaving the side panel off the tower case you have there when going back and forth then it being too complicated! *Biggrin

 

Alternatively, you can use VMWare Player to install Windows XP mode there. Then enable the "unity mode" so you only see the specific application in a window and not the full XP desktop. I don't remember all the procedure, but you can Google it. I had done it in some Windows 7 systems than didn't support Windows Virtual PC.

 

At first sight you had to download the Virtual PC app previously seen for Vista onto the 7 machine and then see the XP Mode installed afterwards once the VPC was on and functioning. Later MS updated things where the two were combined into a single package with the installer handling thing automatically.

The XP Mode will work on the the VM Player 7.1.2 seen out just before being replaced at the VM ware site by the trial version of VM Workstation Player 12 where you have to click on a numbered button each time you go to run that. That was removed lightning fast here to go back to what worked! Here I also had tried it on the Hyper-V option when seeing that enabled but forget about VM ware if you decide to try that out. The two won't mesh with the VM Player installer opting out on you.

The problem seen with Hyper-V was not seeing the 90 day activation take place on the XP Mode as it would have on 7 with the full VPC package. Mainly that was an MS option seen back in 2009 to get businesses to chance it by upgrading to 7 and wouldn't be expected to see any support at this time especially with XP support dropped entirely early last year!