Using “built in” applications with Windows XP mode

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Last week I was asked, on Twitter, if it was possible to publish a built in application (like Internet Backgammon) from Windows XP mode.  The answer is: Yes, but it is a little tricky.

Most people use Windows XP mode to run specific applications that they have that will not run under Windows 7.  These people do not want to have their start menus cluttered with all the applications that populate the Windows XP menu – they just want to access their applications.  For this reason, we block publishing of all of the built in applications in Windows XP – but you can unblock them.

To test this out – I published Internet Backgammon on one of my systems.  The process that you need to follow is this:

  1. Figure out the path and name of the executable that you want to publish.  In my case this was “bckgzm.exe” in “C:\Program Files\MSN Gaming Zone\Windows”:
    image
  2. Then you need to open RegEdit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtual Machine\VPCVAppExcludeList
  3. Search the entries here and you should find a string value with a name of the executable (“bckgzm.exe” in my case) and a data value of the path.  Delete this key.
  4. Reboot the virtual machine.

After doing this – the application will appear in the Windows 7 start menu:

image

And you can run it as an integrated application:

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Cheers,
Ben