XP Virtual Machine in Win 7 - strange happenings

[John Whitworth]

>>>>

I'd still be inclined to update whilst hunting for alternative solutions. When Office 2000 was first brought out, Virtual computing was rather less common.

JW

[Bill]

In message , Roger Mills writes

Oooh, have you got Quicken installed and registered and in the UK? Someone I was trying to help had it running perfectly on XPMode, but hit a succession of immovable Quicken nonsenses when trying to get it registered. As far as I remember, she found that the UK registration site is no more, Intuit UK said get lost, the Americans refused access and then wouldn't deal with anyone outside their borders when she rang.

[Roger Mills]

For me, registration isn't an issue - I've still got the original Registration Number, and simply keyed that in when asked, with no need to contact Intuit. I'm still using the free upgrade to Quicken 98 which made it millennium compliant!

I've actually installed it on *both* the Win 7 host and the XP Virtual machine. For most purposes - for managing my personal finances - it works perfectly ok under Win 7. However, I also manage the finances of a voluntary organisation which needs to issue the occasional invoice and - for some inexplicable reason - the invoice function doesn't work in Win 7!

Incidentally, that's not the only program whose behaviour is different between XP and Win 7. I have a program which scans music scores and performs a sort of OCR on them to produce computer-readable music notation. Under Win 7, everything come up in GERMAN - with no choice of lanuage. Run the same program under XP, and it defaults to English - with an option to use German instead. Explain that if you will!

[dave]

But he hit the nail right on the head though.

Wife is ADC for the town's Beaver Scout Groups and has to send minutes from the many meetings she has to attend, to many Beaver Scout Colonies.

When she bought herself a new fancy computer, she got complaints from group Scout leaders that they couldn't open the minutes she was sending them. Needless to say, she was using Word 2003. There is a problem with later versions of word that they can't communicate with earlier versions.

I showed her how to make a RTF document and there have been no problems since.

Dave

[Roger Mills]

Are you sure you don't mean Word 2007? AFAIK, all versions of word from

97 through 2003 used the same format - but 2007 defaults to docx format. nevertheless, it's a trivial matter to tell it to save in 97-2003 format

- then everyone should be able to receive it.

[John Whitworth]

He didn't really, did he? He just came out with the usual "I really do not have a clue about computers or software development - lets blame everything on Microsoft" argument. The nail sits with a file handling issue, which shows it's ugly head when using virtualisation - something which didn't exist in that form in 1999/2000 (Connectix Virtual PC 4 came about in 2001).

[Bob Eager]

More to the point, there's an easy to install add-on for 2003 that allows it to handle the 2007 formats...

[Huge]

Oh, how sweet. Is there a lot of money in jumping to incorrect conclusions, or is it just a hobby? You are aware that Microsoft are convicted monopolists, aren't you? And there are well documented cases of them designing APIs to prevent competitors software from running? Or are you too busy sucking Bill Gates' dick to notice?

[John Whitworth]

My gosh, yes. I take it all back. Word 2000 doesn't work because of all the reasons you state - particularly what I am doing with Bill.

Thanks for your well reasoned and considered response to this solution. It all fits into place nicely now. I'm sure the OP is much happier.

One more for the killfile! :-)

[geoff]

In message , BillW50 writes

Better send one to me then

[Roger Mills]

True. having said that, though, some applications (such as Quicken) - which were also developed before virtualisation was around - *don't* have a file handling issue. Strange!

[BillW50]

Well my experience with Word 97/2000, I must say Word puts temporary files in some really weird places. Not a problem normally, but under virtualization I can see this as a possible problem. I don't know, how does the later versions of Word handle it? Does it handle it differently?

[BillW50]

In news: [e-mail], geoff typed on Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:19:55 +0100:

Really? You like Windows 7? After using it for about a year, I saw it only capable of running 95% of what I want to do vs. Windows XP which runs 100% of what I want. And Windows 7 eats up lots of CPU time just while you are doing nothing. Windows XP when you are doing nothing, the CPU is actually at or near idle. And running something that is very CPU intensive like games, always runs slower under Windows 7 than it does under Windows XP. So I don't see Windows 7 as any big deal and I can see why some want to downgrade their Vista and Windows 7 machines. And I don't blame them one bit. ;-)

[Bill]

That's interesting. I was fairly sure that her version had a serial number that then took something from inside the machine, produced another number that had to be checked in with Intuit to give the real registration. I've just checked with her and she says she gave up, and her accountant produced a later version that didn't have to be registered. So all is right with the world..

[geoff]

In message , BillW50 writes

Wouldn't touch for my work machines, but, using VM , having bought a new webcam, etc, it sort of works well enough

even turnpike is almost OK

but I agree

XP is rockandroll

[Mike Barnes]

geoff :

Interesting.

I just made a spare partition and put Windows 7 onto it, so I can now boot XP or 7. As time permits I'm intending to configure the Win7 partition and install my (numerous) apps on it, with the eventual aim of moving to Win7 full time.

After a day or so at it I find that I'm looking at Win7's new features, finding them useless or worse, and expending almost all of my effort on making Win7 work like XP does.

And I'm wondering why I'm bothering.

The way I'm thinking now, I'll not waste any more time on Windows 7 until I buy a new PC, when I'd be doing all that configuring and installing anyway.

[dennis]

Are you sure you actually have looked at windows 7? None of what you say is true for me or anyone else I know with windows 7. You can send me the other win7 if you don't want it. ;-)

[Mark]

It also happens with different versions of MS Word.

[Doctor Drivel]

Maxie, your showmanship is emerging once again. Fantastic. What a man! Do you play a vuvuzela on stage in your Paddy Band with your turned down wellies on? Unbelievable. Such originality to this man. Fantastic indeed.

[Mark]

I'm no fan of Bill's but Win7 does have some useful features here:

You can download a special version of virtual PC which allows you to virtualizes disks and USB devices. It has a Windows XP virtual appliance called "XP Mode".

You can also "boot" directly from a virtual appliance and it only virtualizes the disk (allegedly ;-).