I just installed my laptop with Windows 7 (x64) and I was curious how the new Windows XP mode worked (more on that topic later). After installing it I could no longer start any Virtual Machines in VMWare Workstation. The VM fired up but immediately halted with the following error: “VMware Workstation unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0)” “VCPU 0 RunVM failed: -2″.

This happens because Virtual PC (which the XP mode uses) leaves a process running even after the XM mode is exited. Apparently this process has exclusive access to the Virtualisation Technology (Intel VT) on my processor. Killing this process fixed the issue.

I was curious what would happen the other way round so I started a VM in VMWare Workstation and then launched XP Mode. The results was disastrous: the VMWare VM halted and was shut down. Virtual PC started but without Integration Features.

After closing XP Mode and (once again) killing the vpc.exe process I could start the VMWare VM again. As you can see it dit not shut down correctly:

So the message is: be carefull about launching XP Mode if you have VMWare running!

Related posts:

1. Using Windows Server 2008 as a SUPER workstation OS
2. Locking a workstation – part 1
3. Locking a workstation – part 2
4. The messaging interface has returned an unknown error