>Hi
>
>Has anyone used or is using Windows XP mode on windows 7.
>
>I'm a at a site where they are thinking of downgrading to XP from windows 7 as a package they use is not released for Windows 7 yet.
>
>I thought XP mode might a better way to go.

Windows 7 has been officially released for over a year and a half, and in beta before then. If a package is supposedly maintained and is not yet Win7 compatible, that's embarrassing. Not only that, it's hard to find new PCs with XP, and XP is past its mainstream support period with MS.

You're probably not the first organization to ask about running that package on Win7. The first thing I'd do would be to contact their tech support to find out how to run it on a Win7 box. Chances are, there are ways to do it that may not be "officially" supported, but work nonetheless.

For example, Win7 has "compatibility mode". You can right-click on any .EXE file, go into its Properties, and on the Compatibility tab, select "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" and choose the OS you want. If the problem is that the program won't install on Win7, you can even run the installer in compatibility mode. Or perhaps, the package by default installs under "Program Files" but wants to write to data files there, which is not allowed on Vista/Win7. In that case you can sometimes tell it to install to a new folder such as C:\CustomApps\MyPackage\ , where write privileges are not restricted.

If they're adamant you have to run the program under XP, I can think of 4 ways to do that:

1. Downgrade to XP

2. Use XP Mode. This is available only on Win7 Pro or higher. If you have a lower version, you can use the Anytime Upgrade to purchase and install an upgrade key to get to the Pro level

3. Run a virtual machine manager other than XP Mode, create a VM, install XP on that VM (requires a separate valid XP license) and use that. I've used Oracle (formerly Sun) VirtualBox a bit, it's a nice product but requires some knowhow to set up.

4. Establish a Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server, and run the package on that. Users would run an RDP session on the TS to access the package.

Windows 7 XP Mode is a prepackaged bundle of Microsoft Virtual PC (a host-based virtual machine manager) and a license for Windows XP. It is less powerful and less flexible than VirtualBox, but easier to set up (for simple configurations). So far I've set this up on exactly one machine, which ended up a bit of a nightmare. In January 2010 a client bought a brand new high-end Dell workstation (Core i7, 8GB RAM, dual hard drives in RAID1). Because she knew she'd need to run some accounting apps under XP (still early days for Win7) and she wanted to keep using an AIO device which had only XP drivers, we ordered it with Win7 Pro. I duly downloaded, installed and configured XP Mode, installed her accounting apps and AIO device, set up its networking and printer sharing etc.

All worked well for a while, but then she started getting sporadic error messages "Unable to start Windows Virtual PC because hardware-assisted virtualization is disabled". This error was spurious, the appropriate BIOS settings had been made, and when rechecked were still set properly. Eventually, XP Mode would not start at all. She ended up calling Dell tech support. Working from a script, Dell support ended up getting her to restore her system back to its factory-delivered state, without telling her this would wipe out the existing XP mode and all the programs and data changes she'd made. Even after that, XP mode could not be made to work, and Dell ended up replacing both hard drives and the motherboard. I don't know if it fundamentally was a hardware or BIOS problem with that Dell workstation, but the experience has left a bad taste in my mouth for Win7 XP Mode.

If the application is the main program used, it's probably simplest and most cost-effective to downgrade to XP. But, if Win7 apps are mainly used, and that one only occasionally, one of the other approaches could work.