Microsoft Stops support for Windows XP Mode (VM) in Windows 8

Well, I was planning to upgrade to Windows 8 when it arrives on Oct 26 2012, since the $40 price tag was too tempting. I realized I have few legacy apps, which I need to use (Ahem... VB6), So I naturally out of curiosity, I searched the internet to see if the XP Mode is still supported. But long behold, nope. It looks like you can boot to the VM, but the activation would fail. So, That makes me wonder, whoever is paying Microsoft for their "Software Assurance" program (Big corporations) will not be affected by this change. Only home users like me would be affected. As much as I hate to admit it, I think MS is willing to screw their own customers, so that they will get rid of XP. From a technical standpoint, there isn't much they have to do.. All they have to do is to update their validation logic such that XP mode will validate successfully even on Win8, but they are not willing to do that. 

Read more about that announcement here : http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/support/faq.aspx

The forum post where I read this news originally : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w8itprovirt/thread/a0a8ccd4-6f54-41bc-b679-7ae23ac1e653


Their lame explanation for this, according to the link above? 

"With the end of extended support for Windows XP in April 2014, Microsoft has decided not to develop Windows XP Mode for Windows 8.  If you’re a Windows 7 customer who uses Windows XP Mode and are planning a move to Windows 8, this article may be helpful to you.  

When you upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8, Windows XP Mode is installed on your machine, however Windows Virtual PC is not present anymore. This issue occurs because Windows Virtual PC is not supported on Windows 8. To retrieve data from the Windows XP Mode virtual machine, perform the steps listed in the More Information section."

I found this to be amusing an also depressing. But I don't use my XP mode that often, so I am going to use the work laptop for XP related stuff for now, I guess.