In a recent article, there is presented the Windows XP Mode feature that will be provided for Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise users. Now, the beta release of Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 was officially announced and is available starting with April 30, 2009. In case of larger businesses, the Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V 2.0) will provide a centralized management of Windows XP Mode. MED-V 2.0 will also be available in beta version within 90 days of general availability of Windows 7. In order to use Windows XP mode, first you will have to download Windows Virtual PC and Virtual Windows XP from the official website.

Windows Virtual PC is delivered as an optional component for Windows 7 operating system, which will maintain compatibility of older applications during the migration to Windows 7 operating system and allows the enabling of XP Mode.

Windows Virtual PC will deploy a virtualized version of Windows XP (Virtual Windows XP) alongside Windows 7, therefore the old applications compatible with Windows XP can be installed in the virtual machine and called from within Windows 7 operating system.

The Windows Virtual PC virtualization environment is also capable of running other 32-bit Windows operating systems in the same time with Windows 7.

To enable XP Mode on Windows 7, Windows Virtual PC optional component must be installed first. Then, the Virtual Windows XP package will automatically create a virtual machine with Windows XP installed on a virtual hard disk. The steps necessary to setup Windows XP Mode are presented in detail into the Windows Virtual PC Evaluation Guide document.

Windows Virtual PC requires a PC having a minimum of 2GB RAM and 15 GB disk space for Virtual Windows XP package installation. Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP package can be downloaded from the official website.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 4:44 am and is filed under Microsoft News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.