Windows 11 and use of a VPM for earlier versions of Windows.

[bazz2004]

Just a heads up on an issue I had upgrading from W10 using Microsoft's update assistant. The upgrade went fine and everything was retained. There was however an issue with my virtual copy of XP running in VMWare workstation free. The virtual XP wouldn't open and was corrupted. I then tried copying the virtual machine from another PC where it was working fine but this didn't work either. That lead to me reinstalling XP within VMWorkstation. It was hard work because I was unable to get far with the install without an authentication key being accepted. I had some genuine installation keys but they didn't work. In the end I found a site with a huge list of working keys and the first one I tried was accepted. Thinking about it this was maybe intended by Microsoft in efforts to beef up security for W11. Virtual OSs could be used as an easy way to invade security on a host machine.

 

[bazz2004]

It seems that the virtual OS needs to be shut down completely rather than suspended before upgrading Windows. That may have been why the copy of XP corrupted. It gets little use so I never checked. No way I'll ever know now though.