Create a VHD from a physical XP machine

vhdvirtualizationwindows 7windows-xp

I am looking at upgrading from Windows XP to Windows7. I have a lot of development programs that would take 2-3 days to set-up configure etc. etc. when I get my new machine. What I want to do is create a VHD of my physical XP machine install Windows 7 and then operate out of my Virtual PC while I take the time to configure Windows 7. Is this possible to do? If so how do you do it?

Best Answer

You could use VMWare converter and VMware server. Both of which are free.

Related Solutions

virtualbox – Creating a Virtual Machine from a Physical One

Windows is a bit different, see How to migrate existing Windows installations to VirtualBox for a guide.

From memory you can use VMware's converter and VirtualBox will read VMDK files.

For Linux, if you want the easy solution, boot a live CD,

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/path/to/images/sda1.img bs=1024

Do that for every partition mounted in /etc/fstab of your machine, and then setup those images in VirtualBox.

Create a VHD (under WinXP)

There is a tool to quickly create fixed-size vhd files without virtual pc installed:

VHD Creation Tool

Best Answer

Related Solutions

virtualbox – Creating a Virtual Machine from a Physical One

Create a VHD (under WinXP)

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