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”.

VMWareError

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.

vpc

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:

WindowsErrorRecovery

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