Recently, I ran into a client who had a computer in a machine shop. The legacy software on this computer was written when Windows XP was new, and would NOT run on Windows 7.
We tried using “XP Mode”, which is a virtual machine that you can download from Microsoft. To make a long story short, it was not capable of doing what we needed.
I ended up using VMware Player and VMware Converter, which were both free.
Now – here’s the cool part of this… I was able to use VMware Converter to connect to the old XP computer over the network and import the entire computer. The old XP computer ran in a window on the Windows 7 computer. This did not take very long, and the software is FREE.
I must admit, there were a couple minor issues, but they were easily solved in about 10 minutes. I have used VMware’s products in a server environment, but had never tried their workstation software. I was very impressed.
If you have an old computer and you’re not ready to say goodbye to that vintage legacy software, this is a good way to upgrade your computer, but still run that old program. You don’t even need the installation disk.
If you need help with upgrading your computer, give us a call.