Why Use Windows XP Mode?

One of the more useful features of Windows XP Mode is that, because it is still a fully featured installation of Windows XP, it can be controlled in the same manner as a standard desktop installation of Windows XP. This becomes important if you are using server-based policy tools, such as Active Directory and Group Policy.

In addition, Windows XP Mode gives you complete protection in terms of application compatibility by providing 100% compatibility with an application that already runs on Windows XP.

The whole point of this exercise is ultimately to make sure that you can always run your applications in some form of a Windows 7 environment, whether that's natively on the Windows 7 desktop or virtually by way of Windows XP Mode.

Windows 7 and Existing Virtualization Environments

So far we have only discussed the virtualization capabilities inherent in Windows 7-virtually loading Windows 7 and using the Windows XP Mode virtual system within Windows 7.

Windows 7 can also be deployed into other virtual environments, however, and the remainder of this tutorial discusses our experience in doing so. If you are interested in virtualizing Windows 7 under another virtual environment, we strongly suggest you get thoroughly acquainted with the specific virtual environment that you are considering moving to.

Sun xVM VirtualBox

The first environment we want to discuss is Sun's xVM VirtualBox software. This open source virtualization software can be downloaded from www.virtualbox.org and installed on your system. At present, VirtualBox requires one of the following host operating systems to run properly:

• Linux (We have tested this on both Fedora and Ubuntu and have seen no issues.)
• Mac OS X
• OS/2 Warp
• Windows XP or later
• Solaris

If you plan to run Windows 7 using VirtualBox, you should make sure that your system has sufficient resources for all the various system configurations you plan to use. In addition, allow for system resource utilization by the host and allow 256MB of memory for the VirtualBox software itself. Your video output should also be fully supported by the host system.