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As far as I can tell there is no XP compatibility mode in W8. How do people run older apps and such in W8?

VM? Isn't that all XP Mode was?

derFunkenstein wrote:

VM? Isn't that all XP Mode was?

Yep. Three years later, one would hope fewer people would be running legacy apps.

absurdity wrote:

Yep. Three years later, one would hope fewer people would be running legacy apps.

There will always be Legacy apps. Businesses run legacy apps for years.....decades even.

I wouldn't be shocked to find businesses running Apple //es here and there with Visicalc spreadsheets. I know well that some still use ancient versions of OS/2.

Not surprised that MS doesn't offer WinXP Mode any longer - it's a complete OS in a VM and XP loses all support in April '14. Better to pull off that band-aid now.

tanker27 wrote:

There will always be Legacy apps. Businesses run legacy apps for years.....decades even.

Yup. At work we're still stuck on XP (in a VM in my case since I run Linux as my primary OS). Some of my co-workers use a legacy intranet app that requires an outdated version of Java to be installed. And there are yet other intranet apps that don't work right unless you use IE. Many of those intranet apps also rely on back-end software running on an AS/400 several hundred miles away that is accessed over a T-1.

bthylafh wrote:

Not surprised that MS doesn't offer WinXP Mode any longer - it's a complete OS in a VM and XP loses all support in April '14. Better to pull off that band-aid now.

Unfortunately, I'm sure there will be a lot of businesses that continue to run it anyway. And at least one high-profile corporate security breach caused by an unpatched vulnerability after the security updates stop coming.

Oh well, Windows 8 Pro comes with Hyper-V so just use that?

It's not like there haven't been any high profile breaches while the XP patches have still been coming, anyway.

Now I have to figure out what is more painful. Upgrading an Access97 database to Access 2000 or trying to get Access97 installed on Win7 x64 ala http://www.sevenforums.com/microsoft-of ... ost1144161 shenanigans.

::sigh::

Upgrade the database. You (or your successor) will thank yourself later.

bthylafh wrote:

Upgrade the database.

Preferably to something that doesn't have "Access" in its name, if you have the time and budget to do so.

ChronoReverse wrote:

Oh well, Windows 8 Pro comes with Hyper-V so just use that?

Between the free version of VMWare + Win8, and Win8Pro + Hyper-V, is either one a clear winner or do they both do the same essential thing?

just brew it! wrote:

bthylafh wrote:

Upgrade the database.

Preferably to something that doesn't have "Access" in its name, if you have the time and budget to do so.

Our programmer is slowly migrating this junk from Access to .NET+MSSQL. Still, got a lot of these things and he'd rather migrate to that than to Access 2000. Ah, and yeah, it's a custom VB/Access frontend that connects to an Access MDB. That was our internal application platform of choice back in, oh, 2000. Just upgrading a db, no sweat. It's all the forms and VB that's the problem.

However, he's got a ton of work already and this is a roadblock currently for migrating some users from XP to Win7. Being a roadblock it still isn't as important as the rest of the stuff he's working on and we don't have other programming resources. I know Access 2000 works fine in Win7 as some of our other stuff works on it just fine.

My options are to sludge through it myself, knowing nothing about VB or Access, or guilt him into doing it over a weekend or somethin'. I'm just glad we finally got everyone off of Access 2.0!

Try WinXP Mode as your band-aid fix. It can launch Access in its own rootless window so it'll be fairly seamless from the user's perspective.

Scrotos wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Preferably to something that doesn't have "Access" in its name, if you have the time and budget to do so.

Our programmer is slowly migrating this junk from Access to .NET+MSSQL. Still, got a lot of these things and he'd rather migrate to that than to Access 2000.

Yeah, that's really a much better path forward if you can take the upfront hit. MS SQL is a decent database (proof to the naysayers that MS does manage to get things right sometimes). If it was all new development I'd also consider going with an Open Source database platform like PostgreSQL; but given that you're a MS shop and porting existing apps, MS SQL is going to be the path of least resistance to get you away from Access.

To run Hyper-V with Windows 8, your CPU needs to support SLAT (EPT in Intel's lingo, RVI in AMD's terms):
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wik ... hosts.aspx

Or, you can use Windows Server 2012 which does not require SLAT to have its Hyper-V feature enabled. Some weird assumption for client systems IMO.

Hyper-V is much better than VirtualPC, so if you can use it then do so.