Last time I talked about how I have discovered Virtual Box (an open source project) that can give a better emulation platform than the standard Windows 7 XP mode, but the down side to the standard Virtual Box solution is that you still need to have a separate XP license in order to go that route. I have been thinking if we can somehow utilize the free Windows XP license that comes with Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate, that would be the best solution. I thought about converting the virtual hard drive from the XP mode (.vhd) to something readable by Virtual Box (.vdi), but I soon found out there would be issues with validation since the two emulators are just too different and would flag the Windows Genuine Advantage even if the OS was already installed and validated. However, I discovered something else during my search that branched off from the Virtual Box development (benefit of an open source project that is) that is aiming to take advantage of the XP mode free license – VMLite.
There more benefit to VMLite than just taking advantage of the free license of Windows 7 XP mode, such as
1. Being able to run at reasonable speed even if your CPU chipset do not support virtualization.
2. A way to turn your old physical hard drive into a virtual OS that you want to keep running but don’t necessarily want to configure a dual boot option (dual boot is so0000 year 2000 imo).
3. The biggest advantage they called, is to sandbox your Internet activities into a virtual environment so that your host machine will always stay free of virus and malware! I have always thought that would be one way to completely isolate your host machine with unsuspecting malware infection, email virus or what not, I guess I am not the only one that feel this way now.
I was very interested in the XP mode feature so I wanted to give them a shot at least, the installation was fairly painless but there are still some bugs if you want to use an already installed .vhd file so I started from scratch again by selecting the native Japanese Windows XP mode file. And here is the result!
Genuine Advantage passed! and 32 bit color to boot, and no more choppy sound either! A true example of something relatively mediocre being turned into something truly awesome in the hands of the community! And that means the regional protection scheme implemented by Triangle soft is now obsoleted!
Since VMLite and Virtual Box are nearly identical in functionalites, look and feel, they are both sharing the same program group now~
I am keeping 2 Virtual machines for now, Rina is the Windows 7 Japanese XP mode, Kiriha is the standard English Windows XP Pro that I have a license for. Do yourself a favor, ditch the Windows 7 XP mode and use VMLite, you will be a much happier person thereafter~
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Just tried it. Works really great! Thanks for the tip.
Does Triangle softs protection check if you have a Japanese keyboard layout selected too? Cause the QWERTY layout is driving me nuts.
hikky´s last blog ..A naked loli in a box, a silence bringing box and something "Creative"
No problem bro, glad to hear it works out for you. Yes, it check everything from, keyboard, timezone, everything.