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I'm fairly certain that this is not possible, but just wanted to ask the really smart people to be sure.

My company wants to run a Windows 7 VM (using any virtual machine software) on an desktop running XP. If this is possible, which VM software should they use?

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    Yes, this is possible. You can use Microsoft Virtual PC or free VirtualBox.
    – Alex F
    Commented Sep 29, 2011 at 18:23

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Given that the VM software does emulate a complete PC, it is possible to run later versions of Windows on earlier version. Pretty much any decent VM software will allow you to do this.

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  • You would think so, but I've tried VirtualPC and VirtualBox and both seem to start up, but BSOD.
    – P.McSwain
    Commented Sep 29, 2011 at 18:34
  • Although, I was trying to create the VM from VHD files instead of just installing from scratch...so maybe I'll give that a try next.
    – P.McSwain
    Commented Sep 29, 2011 at 18:36
  • Obviously it's hard to say what's going wrong but I have run Win7 in a VM on XP using VirtualBox and it worked. However I did put a fresh install into the VM, so that might be the one difference that actually gets things to work. Windows can get a bit funny if its ideas of what the hardware looks like and the "real fake" hardware differ too much. Like specifying the wrong type of disk controller or controller mode.
    – Timo Geusch
    Commented Sep 29, 2011 at 18:37
  • If I remember, MS said, cant do 64 virtual on 32bit system?
    – Psycogeek
    Commented Oct 1, 2011 at 3:52

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