Windows 7 XP Mode: How To Install

You people may know that that Windows 7 will include a special XP Mode that will run the older operating system in a virtual environment inside the Windows 7 OS to ensure maximum compatibility. Despite its age, Windows XP is still widely used for several reasons – speed and compatibility being two of the leading ones.In fact, Microsoft is claiming that XPM provides near perfect Windows XP compatibility within Windows 7 – so that takes care of one of the raison d'etre for the old OS.

The speed and light(er) weight factor of Windows XP, however, won’t be maintained as you’ll need a fairly decent machine to run XP Mode. The system requirements to run XP Mode are beefier than those to run Windows 7 (which should run on any recent netbook).
But Not all modern processors support virtualization, even if from the same generation. For example, only certain Core 2 Duo chips feature the technology. Hopefully Microsoft will release more specific hardware requirements for XP Mode soon.Learn about BIOS Settings from Microsoft's website.

Microsoft will include a full license of Windows XP SP3 with every copy of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate for use with XP Mode.

The requirements to run Windows XP Mode according to Microsoft:
* 1 GHz 32bit or 64bit processor or better
* CPU w/ AMD-VTM or Intel® VT features turned on
* 2 GB of memory recommended
* Additional 15GB of hard disk space per virtual Windows environment recommended.
You need to make sure that the processor is supporting hardware virtualization and that this feature is enabled in the computer’s Bios (read hardware virtualization check for more information).
 
Now here's the instruction for you to install Virtual PC on your windwos 7 PC:
1. Download the Virtual PC beta  from Microsoft Virtual PC page and also Windows XP Mode beta from there.

 2. Install the Windows virtual PC beta by following the simple on screen procedure and reboot your machine to see Virtual Windows XP entry in your Start menu.

3. Now, Double-click on VirtualWindowsXP.msi package to start Virtual Windows XP wizard and click Next to continue.During installation of XPM, you must configure Windows Update to provide automatic or manual updates, and you must enter a password. To save yourself frustration, click the checkbox to Remember Credentials, and you won't need to remember the password to start XPM.

4. During installation, you must also select the location for the VHD file used by XPM. By default, the location is C:\Program Files\Virtual Windows XP\, but you can browse to other locations as desired. The target drive must have about 1.6GB of free disk space.
5. You will see the XP mode installation process. It may take few minutes to complete the installation.
6. Once you complete the installation, Virtual Windows XP starts for the first time. Here you will see Virtual Windows XP license agreement. Accept the license agreement and click Next to continue.
7. In the following window, you need to enter a password for the account. You cannot leave the password field blank. In case, if you don’t like to enter the password each time, you can check the option Remember credentials to store the password.
8. Next you need to configure Windows XP for automatic updates.
9. Once you are done with the configuration, Windows XP mode is ready to use.