Friday, January 05, 2007

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 RC, Running on XP Home!

02/19/207 Update: Microsoft has now released the final version of Virtual PC 2007. The final released setup.exe file seems to now allow installation of VPC 2007 on XP Home versions without the "hack" noted below. See my newer post: Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 (Final) Released

If you decide to do the hack method listed below anyway, my tests indicate you may need to manually run the MS XML 6 setup file after you run the msi installer. ---Claus

(original post follows below)

It has been a while since I last posted about Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007.

This week Microsoft announced Release Candidate for Virtual PC 2007 (still in Beta) is now available.

This normally would have brought me a measure of cheer, but seeing as Virtual PC 2007 has been updated to only now run on XP Professional and Windows 2003 server editions...that left me very bummed out. The newly updated RC version is working great on my XP Pro work machine, but at home, I'm still stuck with Virtual PC 2004.

Others are bummed too...no VPC 2007 on XP Home.

What to do?

Well, hot on the heels of my recent post "Making Windows Defender work with Windows 2000", a fair bit of work on Google, and my stubbornness...I present you the following:

How to get Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 RC to run on XP Home

  1. Download it from Microsoft Connect, you will have to register and enroll if you don't already have an account.
  2. You will now have a setup.exe file. Make a subfolder somewhere and place the downloaded file into it. I named my folder VPC2007.
  3. Go get Orca and install it on your system, if you haven't already. (See this post for more details on Orca.)
  4. Open a command-prompt session and browse to the sub-folder where you have the setup.exe file.
  5. Now extract the contents of the setup.exe file with the following command: setup.exe /c /t .\
  6. It should take a moment to complete, but you will now see three files in the folder:
    1. setup.exe (your original)
    2. msxml6-KB927977-enu-x86.exe
    3. Virtual_PC_2007_Install.msi
  7. Close the command-prompt session window.
  8. Run Orca and use it to open the Virtual_PC_2007.msi file.
  9. On the left-hand side listing find the "Custom Action" item and select it.
  10. On the right-hand side listing, find the "CA_CheckIfWeCanInstall" row.
  11. Right-click on that row, then select the "Drop Row" option to delete it.
  12. Save the changes and close Orca.
  13. Now run the modified Virtual_PC_2007_Install.msi file.
  14. It should install the application without any issues.

I'm running Vista RC1 right now in Virtual PC 2007 RC on my XP Home machine!

Notes

You must have the msxml6-KB927977-enu-x86.exe file in the same location as the msi file. If you do not, you will get an error message like "Error message: "Virtual PC cannot find MSXML 4. Please reinstall Virtual PC or install MSXML 4 and try again." Downloading MSXML 4 won't fix it. Despite what the message says, you must actually have the MSXML 6 version which the msi will install automatically from that other file.

I don't know yet if this will work on Windows 2000 Professional systems. That OS is not supported under VPC 2007 either, although it was under VPC 2004. I think it will, although I haven't had time to try it yet. If you beat me to it, let me know.

You will probably want to uninstall the virtual machine additions from any Windows virtual OS systems you may have installed it on under VPC 2004. It has been updated in the latest VPC 2007 RC version.

Additional Reading and Credits

Google Groups thread: How to install vpc2007 on xp home

How To Obtain List of Files Installed by Microsoft IExpress EXE

Command-line switches for IExpress software update packages

Command-Line Options

Happy modding!

--Claus

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

This works great..thank you for putting online. I can now use virtual pc 2007 on my XP Home system.

Anonymous said...

You are welcome!

I'm glad you found it useful!

Thanks for stopping by.

Anonymous said...

YES, It's working! Amazing! Big Thanks!

Anonymous said...

This works with Windows 2000 Pro as well. Thanks!!

Anonymous said...

Thanks, this post was awesome.

Anonymous said...

i am not able to extract setup file using command setup.exe /c/t.\ ..where i am wrong please help..

Anonymous said...

Try this (I just tested it again and it worked fine on my pc):

setup.exe /c /t .\

Please note there is a character space between each switch (/c /t .\)

It might not be clear in the post's font style.

See if that works better.

Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\Claus\My Documents\Downloads\VPC

[.] [..] setup.exe
1 File(s) 31,884,672 bytes
2 Dir(s) 110,740,320,256 bytes free

C:\Documents and Settings\Claus\My Documents\Downloads\VPC>setup.exe /c /t .\

C:\Documents and Settings\Claus\My Documents\Downloads\VPC>dir

Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is xxxx-xxxx

Directory of C:\Documents and Settings\Claus\My Documents\Downloads\VPC

09/27/2007 12:20 PM directory .
09/27/2007 12:20 PM directory ..
09/27/2007 12:20 PM 910,080 msxml6-KB927977-enu-x86.exe
09/27/2007 12:18 PM 31,884,672 setup.exe
09/27/2007 12:20 PM 28,084,736 Virtual_PC_2007_Install.msi
3 File(s) 60,879,488 bytes
2 Dir(s) 110,710,075,392 bytes free

Anonymous said...

I tried what you said to type
it said "Please go to the Control Panel to install and configure system components."
What do I do?

Anonymous said...

A Google search on that term finds that the most common reasons are that either an autorun.ini file somewhere is trying to run but can't (and likely shouldn't even be present) or that there is a setup.exe application that is somewhere it shouldn't be and it is attempting to run when called. I think the 2nd is the more likely issue of the two.

Google Search Results

Also, be sure you are typing the extraction command correctly (I'm sure you are)

setup.exe /c /t .\

Please note there is a character space between each switch (/c /t .\)

It might not be clear in the post's font style.

Last I tried, the final version of Virtual PC 2007 did install on all versions of XP (including Home) without needing to do this "workaround" anymore.

During the installation and 1st run it will complain that you are using an unsupported OS, but if you keep going, it accepts it anyway.

Good Luck.