Virtualise Windows XP

[Big Jim]

Customer has old software that will not run on modern OS, one of their machines running the software just crapped itself.
They have given me another machine that is still working that also contains the software.

I need the easiest way to virtualise this on their new Dell laptop which is running W10.
1 caveat is that it must be able to pass through USB devices because there is a USB stick of some sort that plugs into the machine and the software won't run without it.
USB stick has "safenet sentinel" written on it, google results suggest it is some kind of hardware based licensing system.

 

[Porthos]

Customer has old software that will not run on modern OS

Does the publisher of this old software still exist?

 

[SAFCasper]

Vmware player or VirtualBox will do this. Both support XP and have USB passthrough.

Obviously need a way to P2V the machine. My approach would be to run a backup using Veeam then restore to VMDK which can be imported directly to Vmware player.

PS.
Stating the obvious, but you absolutely want to block/restrict network access to this XP machine as much as possible. At minimum you want to remove it's default gateway.

 

[Markverhyden]

The USB stick is what I call a license dongle. Specially programmed firmware, not just some random stick with some files on it. Safenet provided FDE so it's no surprise they have this also. Before USB companies used to provide dongle licenses via a pass through device on parallel ports amongst other things.

Most virtualization apps allow exposing certain parts of the underlying hardware. For example Parallels on a Mac will prompt whether you want to see the device in Windoze or the Mac.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Windows 10 Pro and higher has the Hyper-V role you can add.
For Hyper-V hosts, where virtualized guests need access to some sentinal-like USB devices, I've used this product with success

AnywhereUSB Plus

Connect USB peripheral devices anywhere on a Local Area Network (LAN) via Ethernet or Wi-Fi without a locally-attached host computer

www.digi.com

 

[nlinecomputers]

Of the three Virtual hosts mentioned in this thread. I think VirtualBox is the easiest to deploy. The hardest part of any method will be getting the Xp to boot. It will likely blue screen because of a lack of proper drivers. I usually use Macrium Reflect which has a repair tool that can inject generic drivers into the image and get it to boot.

 

[Sky-Knight]

disk2vhd, setup VM in a local HyperV on Windows 10 pro.

You are using Pro aren't you?

disk2vhd will make a vhdx file out of the drive you aim it at, then you build a VM in hyperv and use the generated file as the hard disk. Click start!

Only real problem is you need the additions from HyperV 2012 R2 to finish things off, which I can provide if you need.

 

[Diggs]

The timing on this thread is good. My daughter and I were just discussing what to do with her old beloved WinXP machine. We'd like to virtualize it on her Win10 Pro machine but not as a new install but something like trying to make a backup or restore point on the old XP machine and transfer it to a virtual instance on Win10.

BTW - Had an old customer stop by this morning with his Win95 486 machine. He says it freezes after POST. I took out the floppy and it booted fine. Sent him on his way - heh!

 

[Porthos]

BTW - Had an old customer stop by this morning with his Win95 486 machine. He says it freezes after POST. I took out the floppy and it booted fine. Sent him on his way - heh!

Until the day it won't and he will be back expecting miracles.

 

[Big Jim]

A clean install isn't off the cards yet, this program is currently in a folder directly on the C drive, not always but in most cases this means the program will likely just run directly from the folder if I copy it to a new instance of Windows XP. I think I'll try that first as that will be the sole reason for running the VM.

regarding the software, yes the company is still alive, software is in the £thousands apparently, he said he does have a new copy but it doesn't work the same and is still migrating over to it / learning to use it.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@Diggs If she's keeping that old XP around for gaming, you'll want to use VirtualBox, because it has extensions for XP that will allow 3D acceleration to pass through to the guest.

 

[Markverhyden]

A clean install isn't off the cards yet, this program is currently in a folder directly on the C drive, not always but in most cases this means the program will likely just run directly from the folder if I copy it to a new instance of Windows XP. I think I'll try that first as that will be the sole reason for running the VM.

regarding the software, yes the company is still alive, software is in the £thousands apparently, he said he does have a new copy but it doesn't work the same and is still migrating over to it / learning to use it.

Make sure to check for some .ini file as may have additional file paths. If it was me I’d go for a paid app since means “real” support. VMware player has a trial version which you can upgrade.

 

[Philippe]

Clone the original drive. On the working machine, uninstall all the drivers. Use disk2vhd to generate a vhd file then add it to properly configured VirtualBox VM (especially the hdd controler) -> Should work good.

 

[Porthos]

this is the perfect opportunity for them to pull their finger out and upgrade to a supported application on a supported operating system, and that it would be against your code of professional practice to do anything else. You could also mention that they could easily spend thousands on cobbling together a solution using the old version without a good result - this usually does the trick!

regarding the software, yes the company is still alive, software is in the £thousands apparently, he said he does have a new copy but it doesn't work the same and is still migrating over to it / learning to use it.

 

[HCHTech]

So, if the XP is an OEM box (likely), this process is against the EULA, and XP likely won't activate as a VM. Assuming you don't care about the first one, the second one will force it into low-functionality mode after a month. So to make it work, you'll end up doing things that you probably don't want your name attached to, if you know what I mean.

 

[nlinecomputers]

So, if the XP is an OEM box (likely), this process is against the EULA, and XP likely won't activate as a VM. Assuming you don't care about the first one, the second one will force it into low-functionality mode after a month. So to make it work, you'll end up doing things that you probably don't want your name attached to, if you know what I mean.

Never had an issue with that. If the key on the side of the box will activate you work fine my experience. Yes, It is not legal but it is an unsupported OS. It's not like he can find a retail copy to buy. This situation is always done with the warning that it may throw fecal matter against the spinning blades at any moment and you REALLY NEED TO PONY UP AND GET OFF YOUR CHEAP ASS AND UPGRADE. Said politely of course.

 

[glennd]

In that case the first thing you should try is to copy that folder onto a 32-bit Windows 10 machine and see if it'll run from there, even if it's not "officially" supported under Windows 10. You could save your client and yourself an awful lot of time and trouble if it works.

The vast majority of "has to be run on Windows XP" applications are really just 16-bit programs that won't run on a 64-bit operating system, and backwards compatibility in Windows is awesome.

agreed. i had a similar situation recently. if the software is 16-bit, you can set up a 32-bit installation of windows 10 pro and install NTVDM to run the 16-bit software. It's pretty quick and easy to set up a test.

NTVDM and 16-bit app support - Compatibility Cookbook

The NT Virtual DOS Machine is a legacy Windows feature available, though not recommended, on Windwos 10.

docs.microsoft.com

 

[Markverhyden]

So, if the XP is an OEM box (likely), this process is against the EULA, and XP likely won't activate as a VM. Assuming you don't care about the first one, the second one will force it into low-functionality mode after a month. So to make it work, you'll end up doing things that you probably don't want your name attached to, if you know what I mean.

Had a similar situation years ago, but a case of moving they're LoB, Win32, to the Apple world. They activated inside of Parallels. But, as a precaution I'd make sure to grab the SLIP key with magic jelly bean. Another for moving over is to SYSPREP the instance. But if the app installs device drivers that probably won't work.

 

[InHomeComputerHelp.com]

disk2vhd, setup VM in a local HyperV on Windows 10 pro.

You are using Pro aren't you?

disk2vhd will make a vhdx file out of the drive you aim it at, then you build a VM in hyperv and use the generated file as the hard disk. Click start!

Only real problem is you need the additions from HyperV 2012 R2 to finish things off, which I can provide if you need.

I recently did just that with an XP. I found freeware to convert the file so VB would read it. One other thing I did was in settings somewhere and if someone doesn't know I'll look it up, I set up the USB to read on startup so the xp virtual machine could find it. My client is a very basic user so I had to do as much as I could for him.

Rick

 

[InHomeComputerHelp.com]

So, if the XP is an OEM box (likely), this process is against the EULA, and XP likely won't activate as a VM. Assuming you don't care about the first one, the second one will force it into low-functionality mode after a month. So to make it work, you'll end up doing things that you probably don't want your name attached to, if you know what I mean.

I found a batch file to run to extend the trial

Rick