One of the new features in Windows 7 is that it contains a new version of Windows Virtual PC which can be used to publish applications from the virtual guest system to the host system.
To showcase what can be done with published applications on Windows Virtual PC, I was trying to install AX 2009 on the Virtual XP guest and to run it afterwards as a published application on my Windows 7 RC host system.
After installing everything, you will be able to start your Windows XP guest system and start installing the necessary components.
I will not go too much into detail about the installation steps (as this is just a showcase), so here are the necessary steps:
- Install SQL Server 2008
- Install Dynamics AX 2009 (AOS, Application Files, Client)
Right now you might think: "Stop! How could you install AX 2009 on the virtual Windows XP guest, it is not joined to a domain?"
Well, that was the really tricky part and as said before, I won't go into detail and just tell you: it was really hard but I managed to install it.
After everything was installed, AX is shown in the Windows Start Menu under Virtual Windows XP applications:
Now, you can start the virtual AX application and work with it. I imported some demo data which was located on my host machine into the virtual AX application.
As the new Windows Virtual PC is still in Beta, I have to say that although everything works smoothly, sometimes the Virtual application window disappears and you have to restart it from the start menu. After some time, the original window may appear again.
This is how AX 2009 looks like running in a virtual windows XP:
