(kwelch007) 1

Hi all,

I feel like I’ve asked this before, but just in case, I’m asking again.

We have a couple of pieces of software that will not properly license on anything newer than Windows XP (half-tracked floppies are used to provide licenses.) Windows 7 will not read half-tracked floppies, but XP will.

Our current solution is to run XP Mode VM’s on Windows 7, which we have managed to make work, and meet MS licensing requirement. That said, there is a major initiative to move to Win10 (which I agree with) in my organization.

We are a MS Volume License customer, and do our “true-ups” regularly.

Question: How can I move to Hyper-V or VirtualBox {preferred} running one XP instance max per machine without violating licensing, yet also not having to pay twice per device?

Ideas? Is Hyper-V the answer to this?

56 Spice ups
2

If the software is that outdated, are there alternatives?

If you are talking about a handful of machines, simply leave them as they are and give the client another device to work on, while i know this doubles up, this old software wont last forever and i’m not sure how well it would work moving it from a system that is already ‘fudged’

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Short answer, not really. Volume licenses allow for a single instance per physical machines. Also, they only allow downgrade rights 2 versions earlier than the current, so as early as Windows 7.

That being said, you would have to license the main OS, then get separate licenses for XP to run virtually on each machine. Volume XP isn’t really an option unless you already purchased it years ago. OEM isn’t much of an option if your current machines run XP OEM and you plan on getting new hardware, as OEM can’t transfer. Retail XP may be your best option, if you can find it.

Now, there is a huge security concern running XP on your network, whether a VM or not. However, I have seen clients run it safely by segregating it from the internet and all the rest of the network traffic, which you may be able to do if using vietualization software.

As for whether to use Hyper-v or VirtualBox, this mostly comes down to personal preference. Though Hyper-v is a bit nicer on Windows 10 in that it runs as a service, so your VMs can run in the background or at system boot without having to spin up the software (unlike VirtualBox).

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On a different note, have you tried imaging the floppy and mounting it to Windows 10 via a virtual floppy software? This may be your better option.

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Man and I thought WE held on to outdated junk.

Yeah I’d pay the OS license twice and bite the bullet, all the while explaining to management that now the 20+ yo software is costing you money to keep.

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I am going to assume you are keeping this software because a new version is very expensive, and I am also presuming that the way the floppy is written is a key part of how the software validates the license.

So as others have said, the licencing won’t allow you to do that without buying 2 licences per machine, and even then MS may not sell you XP licensing, but assuming it does you’ll need to weigh the extra cost of the OS licenses against the cost of updating the software to something more modern and kind of go from there. Whichever is cheaper is the one that makes sense.

If my fist assumption is incorrect, or it’s a piece of software that cannot be updated to a new version, then you have no choice to go dual OS license per machine. And if MS won’t sell you XP licenses, then you have little choice but to do it outside of license compliance and need to compare the legal/fine costs against the cost of a new software (if that is even possible). That is a real “Sophie’s choice” type situation, but your definitely not the first to make it. I had a customer once you had the choice to do this, or spend about 5 million dollars to replace all their few CNC machines since the only software that it worked with was Windows 98 based and the manufacturer of the software no longer exists.

What software is it?

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can you clone the floppy disk on windows XP to an ISO or whatever they are called for floppies?

http://www.winimage.com/winimage.htm

that looks like itll do the job.

You can then mount this floppy image on windows 7 ->10 and licence yourself that way using a VM? Would that work?

Also i believe windows 7 - 10 allows downgrade rights, so if you buy windows 10 pro you can install XP pro instead.

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I am stuck with a couple of XP machines that I need to control specialist machines in the factory. I found the easy way was to give the operators new machines and leave the XP machines as stand alone without any internet connectivity. I placed a KVM on the desk so that the operator only had a single keyboard and mouse to worry about and he just has to switch from input A to B.

Not very elegant, but it works.

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In regards to Stabby’s reply that Virtualbox cannot be run as a service like Hyper-V, I found this a couple years ago and it has been starting the VM in headless mode automatically as soon as the host OS boots, http://vboxvmservice.sourceforge.net/

Pretty easy to set up and has been very reliable.

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Inelegant solutions that keep working are worth more than elegant solutions that break down.

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Another option may be to contact the software provider and see if you can get a different license for the software that doesn’t require the floppy. I had an XP machine that ran software to control an aluminum brazing furnance and required a security dongle connected to an LPT port. Our version wouldn’t run on anything above XP, and the software upgrade was $60,000 to put it on Windows 7. The boss wouldn’t approve that, so I started working on migrating it to a virtual machine. The problem I had was the license dongle connection wouldn’t virtualize correctly. So, I contacted the software company and upgraded to a license that didn’t require the dongle for $500.

If you can do that, then you may not have to run it on XP and might be able to run it on 7 or even 10 if you don’t have to worry about the floppies. It just depends on how the software is setup though.

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But it’s secure. Your XP boxes can’t be attacked via the network.

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It could also be what we have run into in the past:

  1. the software vendor doesn’t exist anymore and there are no new versions available
  2. no one else develops this kind of software, so it’d have to be in-house-developed, meaning man-hours
  3. the “upstairs” people may not be willing to “flip the switch” on changing part of their business model to accommodate a new way of doing things so that this software can be deprecated from the company service portfolio
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Note that if you have legitimate Win7 (or Vista) licenses (perhaps machines that came with Win 7 OEM), they can be downgraded to Win XP.

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Virtual Clone Drive. Works like a beast. I love it.

My first instinct said: “Have an XP machine running and simply map the floppy drive to the A: drive in the Win10 machine.”

But Virtual Clone drive is a much better idea.

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I’d probably go with disconnecting from the network and run the xp box standalone to run the equipment. Then start pounding into management’s head that this is unsustainable and they need to start budgeting to replace the equipment. I’m surprised you can still read from an old 720k floppy. What happens if that bites the dust?

Trying to virtualize xp is just going to cause you headaches and you are still exposing it on your network.

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Is the company who’s software you are using still in business?

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If your volume licensing includes Windows Software Assurance, I think the following would apply:

“The PC or the primary user of the PC needs active Windows Software Assurance, which permits running up to four virtual machines concurrently.”

Source: http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/8/d/98d6a56c-4d79-40f4-8462-da3ecba2dc2c/licensing_windows_desktop_os_for_virtual_machines.pdf

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Which normally ends up being less then going with newer software that does the same thing, and that’s why you see companies holding on to old software all over the place.

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Yes, there is an alternative. If costs more than $200K

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