Run vista on vmware

I have a vista PC and all my software discs were stolen. I want to upgrade to win 7 but keep my vista drive intact to run in a virtual environment. I intend to keep the vista hard drive and run it on a win 7 machine in a virtual environment. Can I run an external drive with pre installed vista in a virtual machine on windows 7 or is an actual vista instillation required. Has any body tried this.

I will look into vmWare vCenter. I actually meant a full install of win 7 and not an upgrade. A new pc with win 7 and the ability to run my vista from a separate hard drive but in a virtual machine on win 7. Saves dual booting etc.

computaquark said:

I have a vista PC and all my software discs were stolen. I want to upgrade to win 7 but keep my vista drive intact to run in a virtual environment. I intend to keep the vista hard drive and run it on a win 7 machine in a virtual environment. Can I run an external drive with pre installed vista in a virtual machine on windows 7 or is an actual vista instillation required. Has any body tried this.

Okay, you want Windows 7, but your software is all in Vista so anything you want to do you'd have to do in a VM? This doesn't make ANY sense at all. Just stay with Vista until you can afford to replace the missing software.

Its a lot of expensive software that is the issue I am considering lap link that claims to able transfer all vista programs to win 7 even from an image without overwriting win 7, anybody tried it yet.