Is there a way to psexec into my own virtual machine (windows xp mode)?

Question

I am trying to run commands on the cmd prompt of my windows xp mode virtual machine from my main computer which is in windows 7. I've tried to look at the name of the windows xp mode computer which is virtualXP-63912, so i tried : "psexec \\virtualXP-63912 cmd" but it doesn't work. Any ideas of how I can get this to work?

Answer 1

As seen here, you need to change your VM from 'NAT' mode, which allows for web access but no local network connectivity (which is what you need to be able to psexec or run remote powershell commands on your XP mode VM, and also to be able to access the \computername\admin$ share, which is what PSExec uses for remoting) to NIC mode, which will bridge your VM to the network, and give it a local routable IP address.

In short, open the Windows XP Mode console, select your XP Mode Vm and go to settings, then change the network setting to bridged, as discussed in this post from Microsoft on the issue.

Finally, if I may suggest it, move off of XP Mode. It's not supported well these days and the new replacement, Hyper-V for Windows 8.0 and above is built-in to the desktop OS and is much, much more feature filled. You can copy and paste from your desktop into a VM, and run machines with Linux, even OSX on your Windows machine.