There is a custom built software that has been developed and tested for Win XP and currently is in use on Win XP systems, there are instrumentation hardwares that interface with the software. Everything is working as designed so far.
Now there is a plan to migrate all Win XP to Win 7. In the scenerio that updates may not be available for the the software to work on Win 7, I have identified the following options
Run the software in XP mode on Win 7
Run the software from XP virtual machine on Win 7
I would like to know
If there are other options to consider
How would it affect interfacing with the instrumentation hardware?
a. Would the instrumentation hardware still be able to send the data to the software if the software is running in XP mode?
b. Would the instrumentation hardware still be able to send the data to the software if it is in a Win XP virtual machine on Win 7?
The software might or might not work under Windows 7. You should try it and see.
XP Mode (or another VM solution) works quite well to keep legacy user applications running. Basically, you are "cheating" the upgrade path by running the application under XP. However, since your application interfaces to a hardware device, you may have trouble. Your typical VM solution "hides" the underlying host PC hardware from the software.
How does the instrumentation hardware interface to the host PC? Is it a PCI/USB device with special drivers?
Some VM Solutions allow PCI or USB passthrough, which would allow your device to continue to work even through it is in a VM. However, this is still not Windows 7 upgrade. (You would probably be running an XP VM under VMware ESX.)
So what about upgrading to Windows 7 and forgetting the VM?
If you need drivers for your hardware device, your new system is Windows 7 x64, and your old system is Windows XP 32-bit, you will have a problem. A 64-bit build of Windows needs 64-bit drivers.
If your Win7 system is 32-bit, a 32-bit Windows XP driver might work. It depends on how the driver was written. You may very well run into issues, but you will not know until you try.
Related
I need to set up a Virtual Machine using HyperV for programming purposes. Software like Visual Studio 2015 must run well on this VM. So, the first step is to know what Windows version I have to install on this VM.
In your opinion and experience: what version of Windows would be more optimized to run in a virtual machine: Windows 7, 8.1, 10, Server 2012?
Host PC is running on Windows 8.1 (i7, 8GB RAM, SSD&HDD).
This is not a discussion or debate. My only goal is to have a comparison, based on tangible arguments!
A simpler question is which OS provides best performance on raw hardware. There is lots of info on this. Generally that Win 8.1 is better than Win 7 and Win 10 is roughly the same as Win 8.1. Then assume the answer is the same for a Hyper-V guest. This is what I do anyway, and I run Visual Studio only in VM's.
I have a driver that needs to be installed from a virtual drive. I am able to install this driver (*.sys) from the normal directory, but when I try to install it from a virtual drive it does not happen. Is there any constraint on installing Windows device drivers from virtual drives?
I think installing drivers from virtual drives on Windows XP is possible.
I am using Windows 7, both x86 and x64 versions.
If you're using two different bit versions of windows from your actual windows and your virtual machine. Say that in your virtual machine is windows x64 and your actual windows is x86. The 64 bit version of the driver would not be compatible with the 32 bit version of windows.
After a hell lot of effort, I found that Antivirus is the issue. The setup should not give any error while installing. Please run as administrator when you run the setup and turn off antivirus if any.
Turning vmci0 value to false is not at all a good approach
I'm playing around with windows phone 7 development, when I press F5 Visual studio takes forever to deploy the app, I get
Window Phone Emulator is doing complete OS boot.
What would be the problem?
PS: I'm using windows 7 on Mac with Parallels Desktop
The emulator isn't supported running inside or side by side other VM's at this stage. It is implemented as a VM itself. VM's running on windows platforms will be detected by the emulator startup and a specific error message provided. I've noticed several people having the same issue from Parallels on Mac ... presumably the VM detection doesn't work over there to stop the attempt.
System requirements documented here and here for your reference.
Similar to how we have to run a Mac to develop for iPhone without hassles, you'll need to run a PC to develop for Windows Phone 7 - at least for now.
You may also find your issue with the WIndows Phone Emulator is because the Emulator actually the real phone ROM running in a Virtual Machine.
Since your situation is a VM (Windows 7 on Parellels on Mac) this may explain your performance issue. Developers using VMWare have had similar issues plus Virtual PC / Hyper-V does not support Windows Phone 7 at all.
Running virtual machines on virtual machines is a massive performance hit, your only solution may be a cheap PC installation of Windows Phone 7 tools etc on compatible hardware ie Graphics Card / with WDDM 1.1 compatible drivers etc.
For my WP8 deployment, I notice that disconnecting my MacBook Air from the power source will slow the deployment down considerably (so will the debugging and tracing).
Simply plug the laptop back to the power source and everything will become fast again.
Don't kill the emulator between debug sessions. There is no need.
Also - Visual Studio 2010 Express For Windows Phone, which is installed with the tools, is much more responsive as it has less features running.
So if speed is really an issue, that may be an option.
Is there any way to get additional languages in Virtual XP Mode under Windows 7?
Thanks,
kreb
From my testing of XP mode it appears that its just a VM running on Windows Virtual PC where the VM add-ons provide hooks for Windows 7 to run any application that's installed on the VM. The key thing appears to be Windows Virtual PC and the add-ons, since you can have Windows 7 installed on the VM just as easily as XP.
I don't see why you couldn't have multiple VMs running different languages if that's what you're looking for.
Thanks, for the interest..
Anyway, I managed to make it work by inserting a physical Windows XP CD (Simplified Chinese, SP2) in and getting the language files from that. WinXP complains that the files are the wrong version though and that they're not the ones used by the install media, which in this case is an MSI that I got from the Microsoft website. So yeah, just ignore the warnings, reboot, you should be good.. :)
I notice there are two version of Windows Server 2008 w/ Hyper-V available for download on the MSDN Subscription License site:
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, Enterprise and Standard (x64)
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, Enterprise and Standard (x86)
I want to set up a development server for testing/developing using the Hyper-V software. According to the pre-requisites, you can only run Hyper-V on x64 based processor. Can a run Hyper-V on a x86 based processer? If not, why do Microsoft offer a x86 and x64 download?
This is a follow up to this question
Update:
The MSDN subscription site also offers a download for Windows Server 2008 Datacenter, Enterprise and Standard without Hyper-V (x64 and x86). Why don't they just offer one download for x86 version on Windows Server 2008, it is just confusing trying to determine the correct installion ISO....
Hyper-V only is supported for x64 CPU. In addition to it 64 bit CPU should support Intel or AMD virtualization hardware. Guest OS can be 32 or 64 bit. There is simple application SecurAble http://www.grc.com/securable.htm that you can use to test you hardware without actually installing Windows 2008/Hyper-V. In many cases you should enable hardware virtualization in BIOS.
There are several problems with Hyper-V. One of the most annoying is luck of USB support in guest OS.
Other than that it’s a very good tool.
x86 Does Not require 64-bit hardware. It exists to allow installation of Windows Server 2008 on legacy x86 hardware.
Legacy x86 hardware in my experiences has often times not had Hardware Virtualization support, and these flavors of Windows work great in this case.
You should only install the 32-bit version if you have applications that absolutely will not run in 64-bit and you cannot host those applications in a Hyper-V 32-bit guest OS or you have hardware that you must run that does not provide a 64-bit driver. For all other cases, you get substantial advantages running the 64-bit version of the os. (Both versions require 64-bit hardware, but the x86 version of the OS is still 32-bit -- like running any other 32-bit app. on a 64-bit machine, except this app. happens to be your OS).