On the plus side, XP7 reports its status all the way through the process, including a progress bar and timer that counts down the estimated time to completion. The process of transferring our XP hard drive of about 100GB, took almost three hours. They weren't kidding about WiFi transfers being slow. An advanced button offers to protect the tool with a password, to control of a filter for excluding files, the ability to drill into source and target volumes.īy the way, when we chose to transfer files via an existing network, which happened to be wireless, a courteous message appeared warning us that such a transfer medium would be slow and prone to failure. A large window then appeared with two panes, one each to represent source and target machines and their storage volumes. Now working from the target, testers ran XP7 again, and when prompted indicated that it was the new computer. The tool overtakes both machines, and neither can be used for anything else during the transfer process. On the source computer (running XP), it simply reads data and sends it over the wire to the target (Windows 7) machine, which uses the data to implement an XP virtual machine. If again the latter, it lists ways to connect the two machines and then to run XP7 on the new machine.īy the way, this tool is non-destructive for either machine. If the latter, it then asks if you're working at the new machine or the old one.
A quick download, install and license key insertion is followed by a prompt asking whether you're simply upgrading the operating system on a single machine or moving data from one machine to another. Installing and using XP7 went much as one might expect. The CRN Test Center this week looked at the latest version of Zinstall XP7 - version 2.6 - which corrects a rare but serious boot.ini error, works better with firewalls and supports running old apps directly on the new Win7 desktop. The company last week announced that Lifeboat would distribute the $89 tool in North America in addition to current distributor Synnex. Zinstall and its XP7 automatic migration tool have filled that void since late 2009.
But that wasn't the reality, and companies that chose never to adopt Vista were given no good options by Microsoft to automate the move from XP straight to Windows 7. Their advertisement of their product is very misleading and I feel that I did not receive what I thought I was purchasing.In an ideal world, Windows Vista would have been great and Microsoft's Vista-to-Windows 7 migration tools would have satisfied most use cases.
I wrote emails to technical support and got responses from their sales department telling me that drivers are not supported and that they would provide support for an additional $100. When I called them to ask them questions, an answering machine asked me to leave a message. They sell the product by promising that “everything will work just as before”. The company is aware of these issues but doesn’t disclose them when they sell you the product. This defeats the purpose of the Zinstall XP VM. I am finding that if I want to print, I have to re-install the programs in Windows 7.
It requires purchase of an additional $100 of support. The company will not answer any basic questions. I followed the procedures provided in the Zinstall XP user’s guide with no success. While it created the XP environment and ported everything, I am not able to print from the VM. I am disappointed with the Zinstall XP product.