How to license XP Mode on Hyper-V

Question

Like many others I have upgraded from Win7 to Win10 and have run into problems trying to activate the license for the XP Mode VM in Hyper-V. The XP Mode VM starts up just fine but I get prompted for activation during logon. I don't need to use it in 'XP Mode', just a regular XP VM will do just fine.

I understand that XP Mode used some special licensing that was tied to the Win7 host which is fine & I realise to use it elsewhere I would need an XP license - I actually have a valid (separate) XP Pro license but this doesn't work on the XP VM in Hyper-V!

(If only I had never used XP Mode under Win 7, and just used a normal XP VM in virtual PC I would never have had this problem!)

So I was wondering whether there is any way to change the XP Mode VM in Virtual PC to not be 'XP Mode' ie. just a regular XP VM? I am sure that this would work just fine then when moving to Hyper-V.

Answer 1

After much time reading other info around the web I managed to sort this out, this is what I did:

• Copied an IE8 installation package on to the hard drive of the xp VM in virtual pc (NB see further down)
• Uninstalled the virtual pc extensions from the XP VM in VP
• Created a new machine in Hyper-v and attached the VHD from VP
• I inserted a retail xp pro cd and started the xp vm
• I chose the option to repair the windows installation and went through that wizard. I entered the new retail key when prompted.
• When rebooting the xp vm I was prompted to activate windows but this resulted in a blank desktop screen, this is where the IE8 installation comes in!
• Restart the xp vm, hit F8 and choose safe-mode.
• type 'explorer' & hit enter
• Navigate to the IE8 installation and install it
• Reboot the XP VM normally
• When the machine starts, I was prompted to activate windows but this time the activation window showed up just fine.
• I activated windows and it was good to go.

My windows 7 XP Mode vm is now running as a regular vm under Hyper-V on windows 10.