Well, it might work if i find a way to install it. It asks for a trial serial number i have nowhere to get from, and i didn't find the retail version for download anywhere.

Edit: I found a trial serial number for 5.1 and installed that, but upon restart windoze gave me a BSOD saying "While loading device NTKERN.VXD: Windows Protection Error. You must restart your computer." Luckily i was able to reboot in safe mode and uninstall it... Close call.

Edit 2: Got a trial serial for 4.3.2, but of course, it's expired. Well, i set the date back a few years and it works.

This post has been edited by Th3_uN1Qu3: Jul 22 2008, 08:51 PM

Qemu is the most self-contained PC emulator that I've ever meet.

It's small sized (~3Mb), requires no install and should work from plain MS DOS, Win9x, WinNT, linux, etc to emulate Windows XP as you required on this question.

--

A bit sluggier when compared to other emulators like Virtual Box, Virtual PC and VMWare but should still allow to work minimally with the emulated windows and I think it should be the most appropriate option for running XP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_virtual_machines

It doesn't however support Vista emulation yet and can also be speed up when installing the accelerator kqemu but I'm not sure if the service can be installed inside a non-NT windows.

You find it here: http://www.h7.dion.ne.jp/~qemu-win/

The program itself is command line driven but the documentation is very clear and contains some quick to follow examples.

There are also a few qemu GUI managers around the google'sphere to help set it up: http://www.google.pt/search?hl=pt-PT&r...GUI&spell=1

Good luck!

QEMU could barely handle 95 on my laptop...

Good news is i got XP installed under Virtual PC 4.3.2 and the startup procedure is simple - set date back a few years, start Virtual PC, set date back to current time, boot XP and enjoy.

It's pretty slow, but not to the point that it becomes unusable. For example i can type this reply just fine without the text box "falling behind" my typing. I can even play a little 2D game. Also pointer integration and shared folders work perfectly, and networking too as you can notice. It does not make Winamp stutter on the host machine either. Success!



This post has been edited by Th3_uN1Qu3: Jul 23 2008, 08:16 PM

I also got that error message after installing 5.1. After a boot into safe mode, the next reboot was normal, with Virtual PC 5.1 working normally. Occasionally I still get that error but it usually boots fine on the next try. I haven't figured out how to completely eliminate this problem yet.
Rick

We're not certainly talking about qemu then..

How much memory have used to run your virtual machine?

Trying to use 512Mb of emulated RAM on a machine with 128Mb will certainly cause any emulator to run sluggish because it will be using memory paged file.

---

Qemu is a very efficient command line driven app, what was the configuration that you used?

Just interested to know why you say that it barely run on your machine.

Well, 4.3.2 works fine for me, and i'll just keep it that way.




Honestly i don't remember, it might be Bochs i was talking about.

To answer your memory question, i have 496MB RAM in my laptop (16MB is used by the onboard video) and i allocated 192MB RAM for XP in Virtual PC. Me still runs fine and XP is fast enough to serve the purpose i installed it for: run the 2D 9x-only game i patched for XP and that i have to test a bit more till i release the patch.

For now Virtual PC works and that's fine with me, i have no more HDD space left to mess around.

One strange (but welcome) thing is that Me boots a lot faster since i installed Virtual PC.

This post has been edited by Th3_uN1Qu3: Jul 24 2008, 09:16 AM