Virtualizing Applications On Windows 7
After moving to Windows 7 a few days ago, I already found a great new feature which allows users to virtualize applications from a Windows XP machine to a Windows 7 machine.
By using this new feature, users have the possibility to install Windows Xp only applications, and run them from their Windows 7 desktop right away.
In this post I will show you how you can get this kick-ass feature up and running. Please take into account, that this feature is still in beta at this moment.
Getting The Stuff
To get this feature up and running following downloads are needed:
To be able to use this features, your computer should support Hardware Virtualization which can be enable or disabled in the BIOS setup.
More information can be found here.
Installing The Stuff
Nothing special is needed to install both the Windows Virtual PC Beta and Windows XP Mode Beta.
Windows 7 asks you to reboot your computer after the installation of the first application, but you can just continue installing the second one without any problems.
The installers will create 2 separate directories:
- Windows Virtual PC
- Virtual Windows XP
The second directory looks more or less like a regular Virtual PC 2007 directory:
The Windows XP is installed into a .vhd file, which is also used when using Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server.
Starting It Up
When you first start up the Virtual Windows XP, you are asked for a username and password which will furthur on be used to automatically login to the XP machine when needed.
The status of the Virtual Machine can always be checked using the dedicated Virtual Machines directory. You can see the name of the machine, its status, assigned memory and primary disk location.
By double clicking the machine in the list, it is started automatically:
When the machine has finished booting, you have a clean Windows XP machine to work on:
Virtualizing Applications
To tryout the application virtualizing, I will be using Firefox since I don’t install this on my windows 7 since I’m always using IE8 ;-).
The first step to take is installing the application inside the virtual windows xp as any other regular application.
That’s all there is to it. The application has now been installed inside the virtual windows xp, but can now be virtualized from within Windows 7.
If you open the start menu of your windows 7, there is a new folder containing all the Virtual Windows XP Applications:
Starting A Virtual Application
Any virtual application can now be started directly from the Windows 7 start menu. Before an application can be started, the running virtual machine needs to be closed down.
Also when you want to start up the virtual machine, all virtual applications need to be closed down, so its always one of them both running.
If you don’t close down the machine, you will be prompted to do so when you start up an application:
When starting the application, the virtual environment gets initialized.
After the initialization has completed, our virtual application is running and can be used as any regular application.
Conclusion
Virtualizing applications on Windows 7 really is a powerful and easy to use mechanism to run incompatible applications.
I already needed it once to be able to install some software which was incompatible with both Vista and Windows 7 even when using the available compatibility modes.