Me versus XP Mode – I surrender

When one of my main computers failed, I took a big gamble when buying a replacement that I could get Windows 7 set up with XP mode so years of legacy tax software would still be usable. That’s sort of important for a CPA firm even when it is only for 990s.

I’m loosing the gamble. I fold.

Background – programs that run in XP may or may not work in Windows 7. My tax software is one that does not. So I would need the XP Mode feature on Windows 7 to allow my machine to run the old software in a virtualized XP machine. Then my old software will work fine. A very cool concept.

Progress: Got the BIOS changed, two key programs downloaded and installed. Got all the way to setting up XP Mode for first use. Then the program set up failed.

Tried everything I could think of, including uninstalling, reinstalling, going back to old restore points, installing directly from the site. Everything seemed to work fine until reaching the same installation fail message.

So, after investing over an hour getting set up the first time and 3 hours trying to fix it, I surrender.

I’ll move my software to another machine and redesign my workflow and file storage methodology.

Lesson learned for other CPA firms?

Set up a testbed to make sure your new computer will run XP Mode and that your mission critical software will run. If you are more than a one-person firm, be very careful about upgrading to Windows 7.

You probably already knew that.

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