How to boost the performance of Windows 7’s XP Mode

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

There’s been plenty written about Windows 7’s new XP Mode since the launch of the Release Candidate – the most common criticism being that its performance sucks. 

That’s partly because, as alarming few of the critics have noticed, the Windows XP virtual machine is only assigned a meagre 256MB of RAM by default, which means it’s effectively running with the memory of a five-year-old PC. 

This situation can be very easily remedied. First shut down your virtual machine – hibernation won’t do, it’s got to be a full shut down. Then back in Windows 7 click Start | All Programs | Windows Virtual PC | Virtual Machines. Right click on the XP virtual machine and select Settings. You should see the screen below:

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