One of the biggest problems Microsoft faces is maintaining compatibility with older versions of Windows that are still currently being used by a lot of people. Applications written for these older versions usually do not follow the best practices required for working on newer versions of Windows and therefore do not work. This become a major stumbling block for people who wish to move ahead with their as for reasons of stability, reliability and security but are unable to do so due to certain applications that are essential to them and do not work on the new as.

In Windows 7, Microsoft heads off in a completely new direction to solve this problem. Windows 7 has been built to keep the security and reliability paramount. Applications not written for Windows Vista and above have a low chance of working with Windows 7. However, to ensure that this does not become a stumbling block, Microsoft has enabled certain SKUs of Windows 7 to get a Windows XP license to run in a virtual environment and give users access to applications installed in this Windows XP directly. This is done using the new version of Virtual PC now called Windows Virtual PC 7. Anyone familiar with virtualization products will know about Virtual PC. This is a new release of VPC that adds on a number of new features that we will discuss in this article. It also enables the XP Mode functionality that we discuss in the next section.



VPC7 is available only for Windows 7 and does not work on Vista or XP. It also requires hardware virtualization (AMD- V or Intel- VT) on the CPU enabled to work. A machine bought in the last 3-4 years should most probably have this feature. You will need to check your machine's BIOS and enable it if it is there. Once installed. you do not get the familiar Microsoft Virtual PC icon.

Instead you get what is known as a "Magic Folder" called Virtual Machines. You can use this to create and edit virtual machines including things like changing the name, location, RAM, networking and other settings. Clicking on the name then starts up the machine in a window just as before.

Once you have installed an operating system in the machine, you should go ahead and install the "Integration Components" in it. This is the new name for the older "Virtual Machine Additions". This not only adds support for mouse and keyboard capture and release automatically as well as drivers for video and sound emulation, it now adds the much needed USB support as well. You can now attach any USB device,on your physical machine and have it recognized in the virtual one as well by selecting it from the USB menu. This means that you can use USB drives, printers and other devices within the virtual environment as well.