Just in case anyone is still interested, I now have Windows 7 running as my main OS(as opposed to in a VM as before) and it is very nice. Boots in about half the time that Vista does and runs Archicad beautifully.
Oddly, the ArchiCAD 11 installer completely froze the system to the point that i had to hit the reset button to get it back. After restarting, ArchiCAD 11 itself worked fine though, and ArchiCAD 12 install went without a hitch.
Tried the XP Mode thing and found it to be(as expected) absolutely rubbish in comparison to VMWare.
Still haven't had any need to use XP except to sync my Palm which didn't work in Vista either.
Josh Osborne - Central Innovation
HP Zbook Studio G4 - Windows 10 Pro, Intel i7 7820HQ, 32Gb RAM, Quadro M1200