Can Hyper-V Server run on Windows XP 32-bit with a 64-bit processor?

Solution 1:

Well for a start HyperV is a server 2008 role, and so will not run on XP at all. The bare metal version still becomes the core OS, and isn't hosted by a guest OS.

VMWare workstation will host 64bit guests on a 32bit OS though.

Solution 2:

As JP has said you can't have a 64-bit guest OS running on top of a 32-bit host OS with Hyper-V, however this blog post seems to suggest that it is possible using VMWare.

One suggestion if you really want to get a Hyper-V Server is perhaps to go the ther way, ie. setup Hyper-V Server as your host and then create a VM with Windows XP.

Edit: As this post suggests (in the title only) using another machine or dual-booting may be your only options, after all testing a Virtaul Machine 'Server' inside another Virtual Machine does sound a bit odd...

Solution 3:

I was able to get a server working on XP 32 bit.

I downloaded and installed VMWare Server Version 1 (Version 2 would not work on XP for me).

I then installed Windows Server 2008 R2 RC x64 as a guest os (I had to tell VWMWare Server that it was going to be a Windows Server 2003 x64)

It seems to be working just fine.

Vaccano

Solution 4:

Hyper-V is either a Windows 2008 role, or available standalone (I think of it as Hyper-V Core). It's an operating system in its own right, and will not run on top of Windows XP.

Microsoft's virtualization products (Virtual PC, Virtual Server and Hyper-V) don't currently support running 64-bit guests on a 32-bit host, although certain editions of VMWare software do.

In short: you're out of luck.