Regarding the activation question, if you decide to rebuild anyway, now or down the road, you'll most likely need to give Microsoft a call for the activation. But you have a legal license - presumably not an OEM license - so they should accommodate your request.  (An OEM license is only for use on the hardware it came with.)

-x16wda (November 25, 2013, 05:20 AM)

It's not an OEM license but a retail one.

I suppose another way to avoid the hassle of having to call Microsoft and be at their mercy is to make/keep a copy of the created virtual computer that has already been activated, just like making an image of a physical harddisk.

But I could not find a copy command in the VMPlayer menus.

I suppose I can just use File Explorer or DOPUS to find the directory and make the copy of the necessary folder. Hope this method of copying the image works.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

I finally took the plunge from Windows XP to Windows 8 earlier this year, altogether skipping Vista and Windows 7.

Along the way, I kept my old Thinkpad running Windows XP because I had a couple of legacy programs that refused to launch in Windows 8 despite using different suggestions in the Microsoft Compatibility Troubleshooter.

Unfortunately the the program author has long abandoned the program.

So that left me with only one key alternative (since using the Thinkpad is such a pain - too slow.) - run Windows XP in virtual mode.

After doing quite a bit of research, I finally ended with two possible ways.

1. Run Windows XP Mode in VirtualBox
2. Run Windows XP Professional in VMPlayer

There is a thread here talking about WindowsXP Mode in Windows 7 Professional which has some relevance but not applicable.
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=27362.0

It seems that Windows XP Mode is meant only for Windows 7 Professional, yet I could download and extract VirtualXP.vhd from Microsoft via my Windows 8 after validating my Windows 8.

There's also quite a lot of conflicting information about how I can run it, via Virtualbox, via VMLite etc

For those interested in Running Windows XP Mode in VirtualBox there's an interesting post here

http://www.wolfwillow.com/Computing/Win8-XPMODE/Win8-XPMODE.php

Some other information here as well
http://lifehacker.com/5965889/how-to-run-windows-xp-for-free-in-windows-8


So I decided to go the other route with VMPlayer (which is free for personal use) since I already owned another licensed Windows XP Professional that's just gathering dust.

I installed this Windows Professional and it works. Naturally, it requires activation (within 30 days).

In the process of setting up Windows XP Professional in VMPlayer, there were several options that I had to decide on like the amount of Ram, the size of the virtual disk, USB3 drivers etc.


I was just wondering, if anyone knows if I activate my Windows XP Professional and then decided that my particular setup is no good, like maybe I should have used 1GB Ram instead of 512Mb, I may have to delete that VMplayer that I created and restart another Windows XP Professional installation.

When I try to activate my 2nd installation in a VMPlayer with Windows XP Professional (now with 1GB Ram and now maybe having a larger Virtual Disk), will I be unable to activate since I would be viewed as having already activated on another computer, that being the VMPlayer I had just deleted.