If - as you claim - all these applications installed under XP still work under 7, why do you need to run XP at all (in the sense of being able to boot into it)?
- aha! Back to my original question! No, I did not suggest 'booting into it' by the way.
Why do you need to even contemplate running XP "in a VM"?
- seemed like an option? (Thinking of Mixture's ulcer.....)
There is zero threat if you have old XP executable, system files etc. hanging around wasting disk space if you don't boot into it.
- good stuff
Easiest way to see if all your old gubbins still work is to rename the XP Windows directory to something else - from within Win 7, obviously. If everything works, then the applications don't need anything in the Windows directory and you can just delete it, lock stock and barrel.
- yup, a simple solution indeed. Will try.