Posts: 2,272
Threads: 118
Joined: Dec 2013
March 14th 2010,
I'm in the process of trying out "XP Mode" with Windows 7. I'm not sure what the benefits are if any, but apparently MS wants you to have a Professional or better version of 7 if you want to download/use this "luxury". It does save you the headache of mapping everything yourself, however you're stuck with drive C: as your virtual disk... so if your Som install is also on drive C: then you can't just map the network share to the C: volume. So I just added the minimal Som stuff to the VM registry with the path to the network share and it works fine. I had to track down this thread to work out all the tricks like making sure MS Gothic is installed and East Asian Languages yada yada yada... speaking of which apparently you still have to have an XP cd in order to install extra components to XP Mode. I'm pretty sure you can legally distribute old XP cds, though I'm not sure how large they are (less than 700MBs being CDs and all) ....there's probably somewhere to download them online. MS has pretty much abandoned XP to the 3rd world from what I am able to follow.
Anyway there should probably be a tutorial for this business somewhere. I was glad to see I was able to use search to find this thread with this forum. I wonder if more complicated searches will work now, or if they still time out. I never could get a search for an exact topic subject to finish before.
PS: I know this is lame, but after I upgraded to 7 all the Vista wallpapers and stuff disappeared. The 7 wallpapers are really faggy. Could someone upload that Vista wallpaper with the koi (Japanese fish one) ... I miss that. I have a black cat I found on the MS website, but it makes me feel like an old crazy cat lady. I had a hell of a time making 7 approximate Vista. I really don't like the core UI direction of 7 but I expect it to improve... the default is really messed up if you keep the taskbar on the side, which is the only way to roll if you're serious imho. Som is no better under native 7. At least search works now (it was always non-functioning for Vista/me) ...explorer still crashes regularly / at random / rises from the dead in 3 seconds... 7's backup function is apparently stuck after upgrade, which sucks because I just shelled out big time for a backup drive, will have to find a 3rd party solution most likely. I miss the Mini Media Player...