XP Mode for Windows 7 Ultimate

XP mode is nothing but, a virtual machine inside windows 7 running windows xp. The best part I can think about this is everything is provided by Microsoft, the virtual machine and the guest operating system, and hence we assume the operating system to be tuned for virtual machine and hence the performance is much better. Last year  I had run windows xp on Ubuntu, and this time on Windows 7. The main motive for me to try this is I wanted to run Need for speed Special Edition, it was one of my favorite game of the past.

You need to have a genuine windows 7 for you to be able to install xp mode, but then you can download the torrent version of the same files as it by pass the genuine validation check. I downloaded one from a torrent, which has Windows Xp mode installer, and Vitual PC and Virtual PC update. I installed Windows Xp mode, which basically is a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) file, which can be booted from Virtual PC. I could not install Virtual PC as it was meant for a 64 bit machine and mine was 32 bit machine, so I downloaded Virtual PC 2007, and it works just fine with the VHD Image installed by the Xp mode.

I think the Virtual PC provides additional functionality which allows you to run Xp installed applications directly from windows 7, which you cannot do here directly, but you can always go inside xp and run the applications. Things seem to be working very fine for me. I also installed the guest additions which allows you to share folders between the operating systems and also allows pointer integration.