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I run some software that's old and 32 bit only and currently on an old XP box. I'd like to upgrade the the PC it's running on but I've only got 64 bit machines and the software will not install even under emulation mode.
If I installed something like VirtualBox on the 64 bit machine and ran 32 bit XP and my software inside it, should this be stable enough to run for extended periods unattended (the PC runs no other software)?
Oh, and which would be the better host Windows 7 or Linux Mint?
If the is you are running in the vm is stable then yes. As far as the host is considered either.
Does the program you are running have any interface with the outside world? Network, usb, custom interface board?
I've run 32 bit programs through XP sessions on VirtualBox for several years with no issues so you should be fine.
I've only hosted VirtualBox on Windows 7 so can't help you with the Linux question.
Sounds promising.... the program talks to the internets.
Nothing more than normal TCP / UDP then. Should be no but no bother. I only ask as the NIC etc are usually represented to the virtualized is as some sort of generic NIC or whatever, so if you have the need for some custom features they can be lost via the abstraction. Usual culprit is graphics card but we use a special NIC chipset with special features for some stuff that obviously we can't do from the vm.
As @TheBrick says it will almost certainly be fine unless there is some unsupported hardware interface involved.
(Sitting here with ten different VMWare Workstation images on my laptop with a variety of Win10, Win7, XP, CentOS and LynxOS)
Virtualisation is pretty mature these days. Any of VMware Player / Virtualbox / Hyper-V will probably see you right.
If you have to use XP - and I'd be at least trying to get it working on something newer first - make sure it's patched at least to SP3 level before letting it anywhere near the Internet.
if this is the only use-case for the machine, have you tried installing 32-bit windows (7 or 10) on your 64bit machine? Should be fully compatible with the hardware but you loose access to memory >4gb (but that will be the case on a VM instance anyway)
Installed VirtualBox then XP inside that followed by the cronky old software - everything running sweetly.
It's pretty impressive really 🙂
Thanks all.