"downgrading" Ultimate to XP

[sgmidf]

Because some of the software that I need to use for work refuses to work on Vista, I'm going to have to "downgrade" to XP using the Lenovo X61s recovery disks. I'm going to do this on a new HD and save my original Vista drive.

I was wondering if anyone had advice on the least painful way to transfer settings (wifi, favorites, program settings etc) to the new drive. I'm going to have to re-install all of my programs of course. I have access to USB keys, HDs etc. I have the Apricorn external HD cloning setup also.

Does the Lenovo system migration program do a good job? Will it work Vista to XP?

Thanks

[K0LO]

Have you considered running your non-compatible software in a Virtual Machine? You can download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and install it in Vista. VPC2007 runs XP extremely well if you have an extra 0.5 GB of RAM to dedicate to the VM, so if your ThinkPad currently has 1.5 - 2 GB of RAM it should be fine. Honestly, I can't tell the difference between running XP natively and running it in a VM on Vista.

Doing this eliminates all of the migration issues, so you might consider it an alternative.

[sgmidf]

That sounds like a great idea and would save me a LOT of hassle. I take it that it's a fairly straightforward install?

[K0LO]

Yes, it's pretty easy to install. After configuring a blank VM you install XP just like on a physical machine, followed by an install of your non-compatible programs on the XP VM.

Four hints:

1. Dedicate 512 MB of RAM to the XP VM; it should run much better than with the minimum 256 MB of RAM.
2. When you create a virtual hard disk for XP, choose the Dynamically Expanding Disk unless you know the amount of disk space needed for XP and all of the software you will be installing. You'll need more than 4 GB for an install of XP.
3. Install the Virtual Machine Extensions (on the Action menu) after you get XP installed and running - it makes for a much better user experience.
4. After you get everything configured the way you like, make a copy of the virtual hard disk file. If XP gets borked some day, just replace the virtual hard disk with its backup copy.

Be aware that you would not want to run games with 3D graphics on a VM, but most standard software runs just as well as on physical hardware.

[sgmidf]

I need to access my work through a VPN using IE6. Would I run the VPN through Vista, or the VM?

[Marin85]

I don´t know about VM, as for Vista it depends on the VPN client. Some vendors may provide compatibility patches or even whole upgrades of their VPN software to make it work under Vista. As for VM in general, it very much depends on the software you are going to use. If it´s graphics or computational software (e.g. Solidworks or Matlab), running them in a VM machine isn´t great idea at all. They would all suffer from the performance and driver limitations in a VM machine.

[carbon_unit]

Virtualbox and VMware Server are other Virtual Machines you can use for free. There are advantages and disadvantages to all three programs.
Personally I prefer Virtualbox. YMMV.

[sgmidf]

I can access our VPN though Vista now. I was wondering whether you access the VPN first and then mount the VM, or if you have to install the VPN client onto the XP VM and then access it from there.

[JPOESQ]

Have you considered running your non-compatible software in a Virtual Machine? You can download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and install it in Vista. VPC2007 runs XP extremely well if you have an extra 0.5 GB of RAM to dedicate to the VM, so if your ThinkPad currently has 1.5 - 2 GB of RAM it should be fine. Honestly, I can't tell the difference between running XP natively and running it in a VM on Vista.

Doing this eliminates all of the migration issues, so you might consider it an alternative.

I tried this last night, but could not install XP from the Lenovo XP recover CD. I kept getting messages telling me that I did not have sufficient virtual memory, even when I varied the VM from 512M to 1024M and larger. Sometimes I also received a volume unmounted error. Is there a trick to this? I'm running Vista Ultimate.

[K0LO]

John:

The Lenovo recovery CD will attempt to install a recovery partition along with a Windows XP partition, and is probably tied to specific Lenovo hardware, so it isn't surprising that it would fail to install correctly to a VM. You need to use a Windows XP CD to do the installation. Or, search for articles on the web that show how to extract an i386 folder from a working installation of Windows that can be used in place of a CD.

[JPOESQ]

Hi Mark,

I thought that might be the case, but reading this thread gave me the impression that it could be done using the recovery CD; perhaps not. In my case, I just ended up in an infinite loop of booting and never getting to the actual XP installation.

[sgmidf]

Does the VM utilize the drivers in the host system? I've picked up and XP3 CD and was wondering if I'm going to have to download the XP X61 drivers when I'm in the VM.
From what I've read, I'll need to access my VPN from within XP after I've got the VM running.

[K0LO]

I can't give you a definitive answer on that but I think that VPC 2007 gets access to the network, video, mouse, disks, etc. through the host OS. When I installed VPC 2007 on my desktop PC running Vista, I did not have to add any XP drivers.

[Marin85]

At least VMware installs it´s own drivers for video, usb etc. I believe this is also the case with other VM machines.

[hellosailor]

Marc, pardon me for pushing into VM territory here....but have you any experience with "snatching" a VM image of a machine?

I came across multiple references from MS that you could actually "snatch" a VM drive image of a working machine, and then simply transfer it back to a VM host machine. The idea is that, say your accounting system is creating problems but you can't take it offline or out of the accountant's office. So you "snatch" an image of the machine's drive, take it back to your VM host (server), mount it there and run it there for diagnostics--instead of trying to build a new image that matches the balky machine.

I pounded my head for days, couldn't get the image of the "other" machine to mount at all.

Would you have any idea how this can be done? I would like very much to be able to "snatch" my W2K machine with the few remaining programs that won't run under Vista, and mount it as a VM on my Vista machine. I just can't figure out quite how to do it!

[K0LO]

Sorry; I haven't heard of doing that. Perhaps someone else can jump in here to help out.

I came across multiple references from MS that you could actually "snatch" a VM drive image of a working machine, and then simply transfer it back to a VM host machine. The idea is that, say your accounting system is creating problems but you can't take it offline or out of the accountant's office. So you "snatch" an image of the machine's drive, take it back to your VM host (server), mount it there and run it there for diagnostics--instead of trying to build a new image that matches the balky machine.

That sounds like something that you would do if the accounting system was running in a virtualized OS - just grab a copy of the virtual hard disk and open it in a VM. I'm not aware of a way to do that from a "real" (non-virtual) OS but maybe there is.

[carbon_unit]

Here is how to do it in Virtualbox.
BTW, Vbox released a new version yesterday.

[sgmidf]

Well I install Virtual PC2007 and then XP3 running IE6. I still can't access my office website although the VPN gives me access to my server. Strange

Also, do people install anti-virus software on the Virtual OS?

[hellosailor]

Marc, grabbing a real hard drive, versus grabbing an image of it, should be the harder way.<G> Of course "image" and new boot procedures and whatever leave enough holes in simply trying to clone a hard drive, much less mount one, these days.

[eecon]

Would installing WinXP from retail WinXP disks into a VM work as described earlier in this thread using a Vista 64-bit OS system with 4Gb of memory?

[hellosailor]

Assuming the VMware or VPC works on Vista-64...sure. Once that is running, it pretty much should allow any OS that can run on the "virtual" hardware, to run. That means pretty much any version of Windows and most *NIX OSes as well, as I recall. There are some limits as to what hardware the virtual environment supports (or rather, what it can emulate) but I'd expect that to work without any problem.

[jdhurst]

In answer to the VMware question - Yes, VMware 6.5.1 runs natively in Vista Business 64-bit and supports 32-bit operating system guests like XP Pro. I have that very configuration on my T61p 64-bit laptop. I also have Windows 98 and Windows 2000 virtual machines and they all run. I haven't yet loaded a Linux system on my T61, but I do have an Ubuntu Linux machine on my XP Pro desktop, so it is just a matter of time.
... JDH

[eecon]

In answer to the VMware question - Yes, VMware 6.5.1 runs natively in Vista Business 64-bit and supports 32-bit operating system guests like XP Pro. I have that very configuration on my T61p 64-bit laptop. I also have Windows 98 and Windows 2000 virtual machines and they all run. I haven't yet loaded a Linux system on my T61, but I do have an Ubuntu Linux machine on my XP Pro desktop, so it is just a matter of time.
... JDH

Can the WinXP VM run most MS oldies that are no longer supported under Vista .... like the older Media Player 6.4, etc?

[hellosailor]

"Can the WinXP VM "
AFAIK No such thing. There are multiple programs (Virtual PC, Virtual Server, VMWare) and each has different versions but I don't think any is specific for XP, although I'm sure there is a "last version recommended to run on XP" etc.
You'd have to read the docs and limits for whatever virtualization package you are running to find out what it can handle, but AFAIK they'll support pretty much anything older than they are--that ran on generic PC hardware to start with. Bear in mind that some OSes just didn't run on much hardware, i.e. many *NIX versions and earlier NT versions just wouldn't run on some hardware that worked just fine for Win95--and was only designed to run that one OS.

[eecon]

"Can the WinXP VM "
AFAIK No such thing. There are multiple programs (Virtual PC, Virtual Server, VMWare) and each has different versions but I don't think any is specific for XP, although I'm sure there is a "last version recommended to run on XP" etc.
You'd have to read the docs and limits for whatever virtualization package you are running to find out what it can handle, but AFAIK they'll support pretty much anything older than they are--that ran on generic PC hardware to start with. Bear in mind that some OSes just didn't run on much hardware, i.e. many *NIX versions and earlier NT versions just wouldn't run on some hardware that worked just fine for Win95--and was only designed to run that one OS.

Okay thanks .... I think just I'll stick with WinXP until Windows 7 rolls out (and even then wait until it's first SP1).

Then again, maybe not

http://blogs.computerworld.com/why_xp_o ... _windows_7

[Marin85]

Apart from the hardware part, this article didn´t really convince me. Then again the only problem with the hardware argument is that by logical extension I should dislike XP because it wouldn´t be able to run my old 386... And in fact I dislike it (-> see my signature)