Make your Live system into a VHD

OK, lots to learn, I see.

Thanks, Roger

huisinro said:

this is nice, but I'd guess that most of the time the converted VHD won't boot inside a virtual machine. After cloning the files to the virtual disk, it's quite often that registry and system files need to be tweaked in order to boot.

For example, dual core XP, will not boot inside a vm with a single virtual cpu.

We will soon release MyOldPCs converter, which converts live system to vmdk/vhd/vdi, and can boot via vmware/vpc/vbox/hyper-V, etc. More info can be found here:

MyOldPCs Overview
(website still work in progress)

Hi there

not wishing to disparage your efforts but that link must be about the most UNINFORMATIVE website I've EVER seen on what the product is, what it does, how it works etc etc.

I wouldn't publish any info saying website in progress -- who in their right minds would use a product on a PRODUCTION machine from website saying "Work / Website in Progress".

I'm all in favour of people developing stuff -- look how Google started but DON'T publish stuff before it's even remotely ready.

Cheers
jimbo

Thanks for the feedback. We were not supposed to show the website yet. But the converter software is in high quality, has been tested to convert over 500 machines without any problems.

Thanks, John :) Will try to contribute here when I find free time

one thing to keep in mind, Microsoft Virtual PC (2007 and Windows 7 version) has a a limit of virtual disk size of 127G, so it's not the best virtual machine engine to use when coming to P2V, considering today's disk size can be easily over this limit. VirtualBox/VMLite/VMware/Hyper-V don't have this limitation.

For a real testcase that XP won't boot after disk2vhd, please refer to this thread:

Booting Xp VHD on XPM, not possible?

huisinro said:

this is nice, but I'd guess that most of the time the converted VHD won't boot inside a virtual machine. After cloning the files to the virtual disk, it's quite often that registry and system files need to be tweaked in order to boot.

For example, dual core XP, will not boot inside a vm with a single virtual cpu.

We will soon release MyOldPCs converter, which converts live system to vmdk/vhd/vdi, and can boot via vmware/vpc/vbox/hyper-V, etc. More info can be found here:

MyOldPCs Overview
(website still work in progress)

"dual core XP" do you mean dual boot xp?

I have converted my system (dual boot of xp and w7) to VHD using VMware Converter. When i boot to w7, it's fine, but when i tried Xp, it doesn't. any idea why it works for w7 and not Xp?

no, i mean xp with 2 cpus (dual core cpu)

As far as I know, all converters only tweak one partition, and leave the other partitions intact. In your case, if you run vmware converter when Windows 7 is running, the converter will try to modify the windows 7 partition, and leaves XP alone.

You can try to run the converter when booting from XP, most likely, then the Windows 7 won't boot.

Our converter fixes this issue, it will process all windows partitions, and tweak the registry, to make multiple boot system to boot.

We are very close to a test release, and you can test it soon.