- Windows XP Mode Overview
- Windows XP Mode Pre-Requisites
- Windows XP Mode Installation
- Putting Windows XP Mode to Work
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Putting Windows XP Mode to Work
As you add more applications to your XPM environment, you will find them reflected in the Start menu depicted in Figure 1 at the start of this series of screen captures. This approach puts all your XP mode applications together in a single virtual machine.
On the other hand, if you want to customize VHDs for Windows XP, you can access the home directory for the XPM files, then copy and rename those files to use individual collections as specific XPM virtual machines. The default directory is Users\<account>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines, and files are all named Windows XP Mode with extensions .vhd (virtual hard disk drive image), .vmc (VM settings), .vpcbackup (self-explanatory), and .vsv (VM saved state from most recent use), as shown in Figure 11.
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Figure 11 The default XPM files are easy to recognize by name.
First, make a copy of the default files (or a standard base image built upon them) in another directory. Then open Windows XP Mode and install the applications you wish for a specific image and rename the default XPM files to reflect their contents. Then you can recopy the original files back into that directory and use the original set, plus as many other sets as you wish to customize.
This can be a huge boon for IT administrators who need to create and maintain VM images for their users, or for users savvy and motivated enough to want to do it for themselves. My final take on XPM is this: If you need it, you’ll also like it very much. It’s a simple, straightforward, and effective tool.