01-08-2015, 07:03 PM
I did a similar thing a while back - Microsoft Virtual PC - which is free. That was to get Windows 98 running on an XP machine, and it worked quite well. From a quick check, it seems that the current version requires Windows 7 or newer as a host OS, and won't support anything older than XP SP3 as a guest OS. I've had no need to investigate the others, but there are plenty of them - lots of fun to be had.
The one big thing with all these solutions is that you need the installation files for the guest OS - and obviously license keys, etc... Fair enough, of course. But the nice thing about what I mentioned in post #38 is that you don't need any of that - the XP VM is part of Windows 7, and its use is covered by your Window 7 license. Which is nice, providing you have Professional or Ultimate or Enterprise...
But yes, a lot of hassle. Personally, I just find it easier to hang on to old machines. I have a mix of 7, XP, 98, Ubuntu, all running on hardware that varies in age from 7 years to nearly 20. In the case of Windows 98, that's used for some specific tasks that require direct hardware access, so clearly a virtual machine would be no use there.
The one big thing with all these solutions is that you need the installation files for the guest OS - and obviously license keys, etc... Fair enough, of course. But the nice thing about what I mentioned in post #38 is that you don't need any of that - the XP VM is part of Windows 7, and its use is covered by your Window 7 license. Which is nice, providing you have Professional or Ultimate or Enterprise...
But yes, a lot of hassle. Personally, I just find it easier to hang on to old machines. I have a mix of 7, XP, 98, Ubuntu, all running on hardware that varies in age from 7 years to nearly 20. In the case of Windows 98, that's used for some specific tasks that require direct hardware access, so clearly a virtual machine would be no use there.
