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I want to test deployment of a Windows application and a virtual PC seems the easiest method (I could be wrong, feel free to comment, but the question still stands). Courtesy my Windows 7 I have Virtual PC, and I seem to recall way back in XP I could download a pre-made image for Virtual PC 200x(7?) and use that without having to install from media.

Are there any similar images for developers for Virtual PC?

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Windows XP mode seems to be the only current freely available image. Other than that you'll need to make the image yourself from a normal copy of Windows. Anyways, this isn't really a software development problem but a request for external resources, and that's not really on topic for Programmers. – Yannis Rizos♦ Mar 29 '12 at 21:32
@Yanni, is this more for SO? It seems like a legitimate software development question, I don't understand why asking for resources is verboten. This isn't a general request for "things", but a very specific one. – Nick T Mar 29 '12 at 21:43
Setting up a test environment would be a good on topic question, however where can I find virtual images is not, Programmers and SO aren't a replacement for searching the web. And since your question is very specific to freely available Windows images, it's also a tad too localized, we have no idea if those images will be available tomorrow. I'm pretty sure Windows XP mode is the only available option right now, it makes sense that only discontinued versions would be officially available as dev images. For current versions, you probably need to make the image yourself from a normal copy. – Yannis Rizos♦ Mar 29 '12 at 21:56
@Yanni, I did search and can't turn up anything (as they seem to be buried under results for laypeople). "Very specific" is a non-reason, plenty of other people could use said images. How do you define "too localized" here? Microsoft is massive and things are hardly liable to change that quickly. – Nick T Mar 29 '12 at 22:13
For a reference on why requests for external resources are discouraged, please read Real Questions Have Answers. There isn't an actual software development problem to be solved here, you are asking for resources, i.e. items. As for the too localized, I didn't mean to say that it's a major issue for this question, the question is clearly off topic without even going there. The only possible answers the question could generate would be links to images, and this isn't really what Stack Exchange is for. – Yannis Rizos♦ Mar 29 '12 at 22:25

closed as off topic by Yannis Rizos♦ Mar 29 '12 at 21:32

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1 Answer

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Take a look here:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11575

It's a list of VPC images for versions of Windows from XP to 7 with various versions of Internet Explorer. Unfortunately they don't have x64 versions available from the looks of it which sucks if you want to test deploying a 64-bit application.

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If I'm not horribly mistaken you can't do much with those, other than run different versions of Internet Explorer. – Yannis Rizos♦ Mar 29 '12 at 21:28
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I just successfully ran an MSI for one of my applications (which involves setting up a scheduled task) and then ran the application on my Windows Vista IE App Compatibility image. I think that's sufficient for simple desktop application deployment testing. – jeff charles Mar 30 '12 at 2:13

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