Convert Physical Machine to VM to run on 2nd PC?

Is there a way to create a virtual machine in *.vdi format (Sun Virtual Box) from a physical machine, either from within the physical machine or by removing and accessing the HD from another system?

I do PC repair and often help people migrate their data to new computers. On occasion there is someone upgrading from an older machine with XP(32) to a Win7(64) and there are several programs that they will no longer be able to use. Rather than find solutions or workarounds for each incompatible program, it would be great to save their old system as a VM to be run on the new system. I ask for *.vdi format because I am fairly familiar with Virtual Box but have not used any other VM clients. If you know of a simple alternative that is capable of this type of migration then I am open to suggestions.

Try this: Disk 2 VHD converter and utility | vipultaneja.com

MyOldPCs does exactly that, converting physical computers to bootable .vdi, .vhd, .vmdk files, fully compatible with VirtualBox. Supports Windows 2000 and above.

huisinro said:

MyOldPCs does exactly that, converting physical computers to bootable .vdi, .vhd, .vmdk files, fully compatible with VirtualBox. Supports Windows 2000 and above.

Click to expand...

Is this a free-full version program? The download page doesn't say anything about having to pay for it but it does say there is a trial version available.

swarfega said:

Try this: Disk 2 VHD converter and utility | vipultaneja.com

Click to expand...

I came across that the other day. I tried it and got an error when trying to create the image. Can't remember what the error was but I'll give it another shot and update the post with more info.

MyOldPCs is still in beta testing phase, so not public yet. A few hundred people are testing it now.

About disk2vhd, for xp, the generated image won't boot in a vm, more thab 90%, if not 100%. It basically generates a mirror image of your disk, but virtual machine requires different hardware config. In other words, the virtual disk file has to be modified, especially for XP.

And it does not support windows 2k, or non NTFS systems.

huisinro said:

About disk2vhd, for xp, the generated image won't boot in a vm, more thab 90%, if not 100%. It basically generates a mirror image of your disk, but virtual machine requires different hardware config. In other words, the virtual disk file has to be modified, especially for XP.

And it does not support windows 2k, or non NTFS systems.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the warning. I almost tried it for one of my win 2k boxes

no problem. The reason is w2k does not have the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy driver. Pretty much all disk imaging software relies on that driver, which is available on XP and above. The Volume Shadow Copy driver provides a snapshot view of the disk.

This snapshot driver is very difficult to develop, it takes us years to implement it, and we have our own snapshot driver, so we can support win2k and other systems.