Windows 10: In-place upgrade - XP to 10 without losing the apps

Hi there

@Kari

If you want to play a bit with something quite interesting - I'm not sure if I can be done with HYPER-V but with VMware you CAN run a 64 Bit GUEST on a 32 Bit HOST !! provided you enable the VT feature in the CPU BIOS - INTEL or AMD equivalent -- I think newer machines have this enabled anyway.

I think this can even be done on a 32 bit machine - although I can't test that as I don't have an old enough machine any more - the VT switch though must still be enabled -- if it doesn't have that feature then you can't run a 64 bit Guest with VMWARE or VBOX either.

Limitation is HOST + VM RAM must be <4GB) -- doesn't matter though if Host machine has MORE than 4GB RAM - it won't use it.

So I'm going to test running a 64 bit W10 PRO VM on an XP Host. allocate 2GB RAM for the W10 VM - that's enough to get it working.

I'll test it first in an XP VM and run the W10 Guest as a second level VM within the XP VM --this might not work because of the VT feature - not sure if this is carried through into the Virtual BIOS from the HOST.

Should work on the HOST though - although difficulty might be finding some XP video drivers -- still should be interesting !!!!

You have to use an OLD version of VMWARE player / workstation as newer versions have to be installed on a 64 bit Host. Old versions are still around on the web though - VMware player is FREE so should be no problem in finding a suitable 32 bit version.

I've also got a W2K3 server system available -- that might be more feasible as W2K3 server was maintained for quite a while after XP itself ended having support. XP was based on W2k3 server which was really robust for its time --that's probably why XP lasted so long as it was a great OS in its day.

Will post later to show results.

Cheers
jimbo