Windows Virtual PC Everywhere – Part 2

Continuing in my theme of running Windows Virtual PC everywhere – I think it is time to provide an update on my Virtual PC on Hyper-V post from just over 2 years ago.  So here is the updated Windows XP Mode on Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 on Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2 screenshot:

The the same caveats from two years ago still apply:

• Booting through the BIOS of Virtual PC is quite slow.  Expect to wait for ~1 minute before the guest OS gets up and running.
• Get the Integration Components installed as quickly as possible - it really makes things much faster (for fairly obvious reasons Virtual PC cannot use hardware virtualization in this configuration).
• This is in no way supported! If you try this an find an interesting bug - feel free to send me a message but please do not call Microsoft Product Support!

Cheers,
Ben

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 27, 2010
  Is this Windows 7 x64 or x86? I tried to replicate the above with x64, but Windows XP mode consistently hangs after accepting the EULA and setting the Windows Update options. Actually Hyper-V loses heartbeat on the whole Windows 7 subsystem. Even left it overnight, it looks dead. My config: Hyper-V on 2008 R2 (dual Xeon, 16 GB), assigning 2 GB and one core to Windows 7 x64 Ultimate. Then installed Windows XP Mode there (with the non-VT patch).

• Anonymous
  March 29, 2010
  I too am having the same issue when running x64 hosts.   My configuration is Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V on the real Dell T3500 host.  On this I am running x64 Windows 7 Ultimate.  I tried XPMode and a new empty VM with a bare VHD.  Same issue--I loose the network connection to my Windows 7 x64 client OS the moment I fire up any VM.   I have to shut down Windows 7 using the Hyper-V Manager on the R2 host before I can connect to my Windows 7 VM again.

• Anonymous
  April 18, 2010
  I am using the 32-bit version of Windows 7.  I have not had the time to try the 64-bit version. Cheers, Ben