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I believe my title is enough.. I have a 64bit Computer running Ubuntu (64bit). Can I run a 32bit version of Windows XP in a Virtual Machine (VirtualBox)?

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Yes.

The guest and host machines don't need to use the same number of bits in instructions/memory addressing.

That said, it's certainly possible that a specific Virtual Machine application will not support this or will have bugs that cause problems when you set it up that way (but you've not mentioned any specific VM software?)

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Thanks, any comments on virtual box? – Shawn Aug 16 '10 at 4:17
I've not used it myself, but from all accounts it sounds pretty mature/stable (though not at the same level as VMWare; if you're using it for a commercial application I'd go with VMware/Parallels). Performance will of course depend on what you want to do... You'll want to have a read of the (very thorough) user manual for linux installation (e.g. it has a kernel module pre-requisite). Windows is very well supported, so you shouldn't have any issues with the guest OS. – drfrogsplat Aug 17 '10 at 4:16
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I run a 32 bit os (Windows 2000) in a VM with VirtualBox on a 64 bit Ubuntu 10.4 LTS. So the answer to your question is YES.

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