My normal pc is currently under 'repair' due to me uninstalling a bunch of apps in an attempt to fix an old app that failed in certain situations and causing a looping screen of blue death.
Now I've been asking for the ability to have virtual machines so I can do testing of legacy software in a safe and controlled manner and not worry about currently installed apps/services hiding the symptoms since I joined here and this incident is ammo for my cause.
However I get shot down saying that I would need a license of XP for every copy I have installed on my machine. I think this is wrong (Scott Hanselman freely admits to using multiple Win7 installs - or is this just a Win7 license thing?) but have no evidence to back up my claims.
What is the legalities of running virtual machines - XP in particular - for the purpose of testing?
As you can get VM's on the Microsoft site which have XP and IE on them (the operating system often 'expires' after a few weeks/months) I guess that covers the legalities.
These VPC images are designed for testing and expire on 1 July 2010 - there can be no issue using them.
Overview
This download page contains different VPC images, depending on what you want to test.
IE6-on-XP-SP3.exe contains a Windows XP SP3 with IE6 VHD file. Expires July 1, 2010
IE7-on-XP-SP3.exe contains a Windows XP SP3 with IE7 VHD file. Expires July 1, 2010
IE8-on-XP-SP3.exe contains a Windows XP SP3 with IE8 VHD file. Expires July 1, 2010
IE7-VIS1.exe+IE7-VIS2.rar+IE7-VIS3.rar contain a Vista Image with IE7 VHD file. Expires 120 days after first run.
IE8-VIS1.exe+IE8-VIS2.rar+IE8-VIS3.rar+IE8-VIS4.rar contain a Vista Image with IE8 VHD file. Expires 120 days after first run.
Note: For The Vista image, you will need files in that set, downloaded and in the same directory, then run the EXE in the root directory.