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Make image of current Windows XP to use for VM on W7?

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Pierre3400

Pierre3400

annnnnnd it's gone
​
Joined
May 15, 2010
Location
Euroland, Denmark
Hello guys

I got a small issue to tackle at work.

Our electrician old pc is falling apart, and hes been handed a new one with Windows 7, due to the fact that he has a bunch of programs on his XP machine that may or may not work on Windows 7, my boss has asked if its possible to make an image of what he has now, and then run this image with a Virtual Machine on the W7 machine?

I hope this is making sense? I understand that tackling drivers would be an issue, but i also know its possible to uninstall drivers from XP making it possible to move the hdd to another pc.

Another solution is to move the HDD from the current XP machine into the W7 rig and then run it with a VM software.

This should be possible, as its pretty much what was done to our in house server, but i do not personally have much experience with this.

Any help out there?
 
Does the new computer have Win 7 Home Premium, Win 7 Professional, or Win 7 Ultimate? If it's Professional or Ultimate just use XP mode (XP in a VM that comes with it's own license)
 
Bubba-Hotepp said:
Does the new computer have Win 7 Home Premium, Win 7 Professional, or Win 7 Ultimate? If it's Professional or Ultimate just use XP mode (XP in a VM that comes with it's own license)
Click to expand...

It is pro, and thats all good, but the main concern is keeping software that we do not have cd's for. The electrician does alot of PLC work and all this software, and its not all of it we have been able to keep on cdroms for reinstall.

This is the main concern, its a sort of back up if we need the software, or if software wont run on W7, do it needs to be this exact XP and not a clean install.
 
Pierre3400 said:
This has failed :( it will not boot up the image made with vhd, it just says "A **** read error occurred" :(
Click to expand...

did you do it on the machine itself while it is running (the xp box)? you NEED to do that with no partitions other than the boot drive. we've found that out the hard way trying to convert disks to VHD with that program.


and i do see a Freudian slip in your post :rofl:
 
Take the hard drive and boot it up in another working machine. Use VM Ware Converter. It is for taking a physical box and making it virtual, often referred to as P2V.
 
The story at the moment, im using Virtualbox because I prefer it.

My main issue is, due to a mistake from the company that built his pc back in the days, windows is running off D: and not C:. C: is simply a small storage partition on the drive.

I have made VHD of just D: and with C: and D:.

When i boot up in virtualbox it just says "A disk error occurredt and some symbols"

I have setup that is running form SATA 1, but still no luck :/
 
Last edited:
What about taking a ghost image and imaging the new computer with it. You may have some driver installs to do but worth a shot
 
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