One of the more widely publicised features of Windows 7 is the new “Windows XP Mode”, which is a Virtual Machine running Windows XP.

The virtual machine allows you to run older applications that might not work on Windows 7 and is an attempt by Microsoft to address some of the application compatibility issues that plagued Windows Vista.

My wife owns a Sony VAIO laptop which I successfully upgraded from Windows Vista Business to Windows 7 Professional. Previously, she had been running Microsoft Virtual PC SP1, which had to be uninstalled prior to the upgrade.

After downloading and installing Windows XP Mode and Windows Virtual PC, I fired up the virtual machine only to get an error message saying that the virtual machine requires hardware-assisted virtualization to be enabled in the computer’s BIOS. This allows the virtual machine to access the physical hardware of the host machine instead of emulated hardware.

The Sony VAIO contains an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, which I know for a fact supports hardware virtualization, but could I find an option to enable it in the BIOS menu? No. A quick web search revealed that the reason for this is that Sony has disabled the hardware virtualization option from appearing in the BIOS menu!

This has caused much frustration and anger amongst VAIO owners. Sony has steadfastly refused to release BIOS patches to enable the option in affected models, though they have committed to enabling it in future models.

I think this is a very poor response from Sony. Such a respected brand ought to be careful of alienating its customers in this way.

Note: Windows XP Mode is available as a separate download from Microsoft’s website and runs on the Professional and Ultimate editions of Windows 7 only.