>>Can those VM files be run under linux when on the same machine ? Licensed host Win OS for that machine is installed,
>>and having totally different files for XPMode and VirtualPC sounds counterintuitive.
>
>IIRC VirtualPC is available to Windows 7 Home users, but the XP Mode VM (that is for VirtualPC) is only available to Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate. Both the VirtualPC and XP Mode VM can be downloaded for free (at one time there was a bit of confusion as Win7 Home users could download the VM -- only to find out that the installation would not work). As far as the VM files working under Linux -- is there a Linux version of VirtualPC?
>
>One hassle you might run into when using VirtualPC is that if the host system has a multi-core CPU, some older OSs won't run at all as a "guest OS" within the VM (e.g. Windows 95 and WinXP prior to SP1/SP2).

In a recent article I read that VirtualBox and VMWare can run the VM's of the other Vm systems (the files of the "other" versions) but I have not tried that. Meaning you have a fully configured VirtualPC under Win7 and the need to run that specific VM under linux host OS, you could fire up VirtualBox and point it to the VirtualPC files. Now if that were possible with the XP-Mode files as well...

regards

thomas