XP mode development in Win 7

Question

I am a developer and have a XP laptop that I use to dev a SQL 2005 database and MSAccess 2003 frontend database as well as VS2003 website.

I want to upgrade to Win 7 using XP mode to install the software above. This is because I still want to install Office 2007 on Win7 etc.

Do you think XP mode on Win7 will be reliable enough for this? Also do all xp mode apps have to run in the xp mode window? Is it possible to access xp mode SQL db from Windows 7 mode?

Answer 1

The XP mode offered in Windows 7 is basically an integrated Windows Virtual PC. The XP mode can be reliable (if you think we can call XP reliable) but the performance of a virtual machine will always be lower comparing to a natively installed windows xp.

You can make the SQL db in the XP mode accessible from Windows 7, since XP Mode is essentially a virtual machine, you need to configure the database in the Virtual Machine to allow external connections to it as a database server.

Answer 2

Visual Studio .NET 2003 is not compatible with Windows 7 and would have to be run in XP Mode. Visual Studio 2005 will require Service Pack 1 to work properly as well. SQL Server 2005 will install without a problem at all.