Windows XP Mode in Windows 7

[lorraine]

I've been using XP Mode problem-free in Windows 7 Professional x64 for almost a year but last night the VM froze and I had to "find my way" in getting it to restart normally. When I killed the task through the Windows 7 Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del in Windows XP VM didn't work, nor did the file menu) the VM would hibernate. When I tried to launch it again it took a very long time trying to come out of hibernation and then would say that it could not load integration components. Next it said that it was locked and everything in the logon dialog box was grayed out.

After some research what finally worked for me and what may help someone in a similar situation was this: Open the C:-Users-[user name}-Virtual Machines folder. Click on Windows XP Mode.vmcx to highlight it and you will see an option for Settings appear in the bar above. Click on Settings and in the left pane at the bottom click on Close. That will present you with options for closing in the right pane. I found that setting "Automatically close with the following option" to "Shut Down" and not "Close" solved whatever was causing XP not to come out of hibernation in a non-functioning state. Once it was working again I decided to leave this as the default option for closing.

Has anyone else experienced this? Are there any other tricks that someone has discovered to revive a frozen XP VM?

[lorraine]

This is a "FYI" continuation of my comments about the XP Virtual Machine in Windows 7. During the setup wizard for the VM if you create a password, remember to notate what the password is! Normally a launch of the XP VM will automatically log a user in but when things go wrong you will need the password or be locked out.

In my experience, the recent Patch Tuesday (10/12/10) updates installed and required a restart but I received an Integration Features error message and then was presented with the logon dialog box asking for the password instead of being logged on automatically. After reading posts elsewhere online for people with similar problems I saw that any fix for a forgotten password would be ugly. Fortunately I managed to remember where I had saved the password.

After logging on I created another user account with a blank password "just in case". However, trying to log on with a user name and blank password does not work when Integration Features are enabled. I had to go back to the new account and create a password before I was allowed to log on.

[lorraine]

I have just discovered another problem with XP Mode. I had not used it for a couple of months. During that time I had installed SP1 on Windows 7 Professional x64 and did not notice any trouble in day-to-day use of Windows 7. I just realized as of this evening the SP1 for Windows 7 seems to have made XP Mode go haywire. I'm including these links from Microsoft Technet that discuss this problem for reference:
http://goo.gl/0KbPH
http://goo.gl/SpiWq

I have not personally tried the fixes yet due to lack of time at present. I'm really annoyed that this happened. I will post back with my results when I try the Technet suggestions. (XP Mode does work without the Integration Features but it is much more cumbersome, especially when dealing with releasing the mouse.)

Meanwhile I hope that this information may help someone else who may be puzzling over the same issue.

[lorraine]

It has been almost two years since my last post and for quite some time I did not revisit this issue. A couple of weeks ago I tried XP Mode again, researching and trying various fixes for the Integration Features to no avail. At this point in time with Windows 8 out I'm not going to pursue it any more for my home computer. I do not want to take the time to uninstall/reinstall it. However, if my workplace ever upgrades to Windows 7 Professional SP1 and if I successfully install a fully-operational XP Mode on a workstation there I'll post back.