Hyper-V

The most notorious draw back in Microsoft Vista is the non availability of the backward compatibility for XP applications, even in compatibility mode. But what is the change that Microsoft have made in Windows 7 to solve this issue?. The answer is Hyper-V

So what is Hyper-V?

Hyper-V is a hypervisor based virtualization system for windows new operating systems like Windows server 2008 and Windows 7. The basic architecture of these operating systems will be,


So the Hyper-V layer sits between hardware and HAL and routes the system calls and responses to the various kernels, knowing from which kernel the call came from.For example, if the call has come from linux VSC(Virtualization Service Client) it will route the responses to linux kernel.

The Windows 7 has a default XP VSC installed. It means what, You'll get a XP SP3 free with Win7. I'll not guarentee the same speed when you run apllication in XP natively. But it was a good try for MICROSOFT. The sad thing is not all processors support this hardware level virtualization. You need to check the Hyper-V compatibility for your PC

Intel processors use this tool to check the compatibility: Intel® Processor Identification Utility

For my beloved AMD users:
AMD Virtualization™ Technology and Microsoft® Hyper-V™ System Compatibility Check Utility

My processor supports Hyper-V and yours???