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Windows 7 Running Windows Xp

Tippaporn

By Tippaporn
in IT and Computers

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Tippaporn Star Member

Tippaporn

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I use a highly customized version of AutoCAD 2000 with the customization tailored specifically to designing stamping tools. It's been quite a few years now since MS moved away from XP and the new OS's are capable of delivering much more from a power standpoint over XP. I succumbed last summer and bought a Windows 7 system. It wasn't until this past weekend that I decided to deal with installing AutoCAD 2000 on Windows 7 (I'm stilling using another system with XP as the native OS, hence I was in no hurry).

I just want to relay to anyone needing to run legacy software (or perhaps for other reasons) that it can be done and quite easily to boot. Though I'm sure there are other alternatives out there I chose Oracle's open source Virtual Box as it seemed to have a great deal of flexibility. There were a few ins and outs to installing XP (first time installing an OS for me) but now that I understand these I estimate it would take no more than a few hours to install Virtual Box and a virtual machine set up running XP (or any other OS such as Linux, Solaris, Mac, etc.), the bulk of the time frame spent in installing the OS for the virtual machine.

I'm also sure that there are perhaps more than a few of you out there who are well acquainted with virtual machines but, hey, I was so excited to have accomplished this for myself that I decided to post.

Cheers,

Tip

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aarn Silver Member

aarn

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Sounds good - once you get the hang of VBox, it will take much less time to install O/Ss.

Then you'll start playing with linux distributions, and make the BIG change! AA

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VBF Platinum Member

VBF

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I have been using VMWare for several years for this and to test out various Linux distributions. Also, as a 'clean' box for testing uncertain software.

Me too - for personal and professional purposes. It's great if you don't want to worry about installing or uninstalling applications - just remove the virtual machine and create a new, clean one.

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Tywais Star Member

Tywais

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I have been using VMWare for several years for this and to test out various Linux distributions. Also, as a 'clean' box for testing uncertain software.

Me too - for personal and professional purposes. It's great if you don't want to worry about installing or uninstalling applications - just remove the virtual machine and create a new, clean one.

If it is a regularly used OS for testing, after I do a new VMWare virtual machine of that OS I just make a copy and keep it ready. Then I just have to copy it back over and have a new clean machine in seconds.

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VBF Platinum Member

VBF

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I have been using VMWare for several years for this and to test out various Linux distributions. Also, as a 'clean' box for testing uncertain software.

Me too - for personal and professional purposes. It's great if you don't want to worry about installing or uninstalling applications - just remove the virtual machine and create a new, clean one.

If it is a regularly used OS for testing, after I do a new VMWare virtual machine of that OS I just make a copy and keep it ready. Then I just have to copy it back over and have a new clean machine in seconds.

Tywais - Actually, that IS what I do too - thereby having a clean "master" copy. I just didn't want to confuse the newbies rolleyes.gif

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Tippaporn Star Member

Tippaporn

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Sounds good - once you get the hang of VBox, it will take much less time to install O/Ss.

Then you'll start playing with linux distributions, and make the BIG change! AA

I've been aware for a long time now that Linux is said to be a better operating system than MS. I've never delved into Linux since I use so many MS based applications. What would be the advantage, say, of having a Linux OS and running MS as a VM?

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Tippaporn Star Member

Tippaporn

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I have been using VMWare for several years for this and to test out various Linux distributions. Also, as a 'clean' box for testing uncertain software.

Me too - for personal and professional purposes. It's great if you don't want to worry about installing or uninstalling applications - just remove the virtual machine and create a new, clean one.

If it is a regularly used OS for testing, after I do a new VMWare virtual machine of that OS I just make a copy and keep it ready. Then I just have to copy it back over and have a new clean machine in seconds.

Tywais - Actually, that IS what I do too - thereby having a clean "master" copy. I just didn't want to confuse the newbies rolleyes.gif

Yes, creating "master" copies is a one-click feature with Virtual Box, too. What an absolute time saver. The master can be exported to another machine and installed in short order as well. Love it.

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Tywais Star Member

Tywais

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Sounds good - once you get the hang of VBox, it will take much less time to install O/Ss.

Then you'll start playing with linux distributions, and make the BIG change! AA

What would be the advantage, say, of having a Linux OS and running MS as a VM?

Performance would be the disadvantage. You will take a performance hit running Windows in a VM on Linux. Especially if you have limited memory as you have to share it between the two OSes. Having said that, Linux (64-bit) will support a large compliment of memory so will reduce that hit some. For example, if you have 8G you can give the VM 4G and Linux 4G and will run pretty smooth. But since it is a virtualized machine, there will be a small performance hit CPU wise due to emulation.

As you, I can not run Linux only as to having too many Windows legacy applications and software and engineering development that Linux does not have alternates for. A fast CPU, SSD and lots of memory and you will probably not notice a significant performance difference.

Another alternative is to run Wine under Linux rather than virtualize. This allows many Windows apps to run directly though I'm not sure of what number it can do it for. You can give it a test by creating a Linux VM, install Wine and then see what Windows apps will function. There is probably a list of windows apps that will operate under Wine. The advantage to this method is it is integrated into Linux and you don't have to wait around for the VM machine to start up and memory is shared with the Windows app as any other Linux application.

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Tippaporn Star Member

Tippaporn

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Thanks for the info, Tywais. Checking quickly on Wikepedia the entry claims that Wine ensures backward compatibility with legacy Windows applications going as far back as Windows 3.1. But, there may be some tweaking required in installing Windows based applications.

Interesting. I may not check this out in the near term but it's good info to have in the back of my head. Another alternative, perhaps, especially if I ever decided to move to Linux.

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