Is there any way to create a virtual machine that you can use in VirtualBox from a physical installation that you have? For instance, if I have Windows XP installed on a physical computer and want to have a virtual version of that machine on a different computer. This would save a ton of time by not having to reinstall and reconfigure the whole OS.
I would think there would be issues with Microsoft's licensing. But even if it's not possible with Windows would it be possible to take a physical Linux machine and create a VirtualBox version of that? Does any other desktop virtualization software provide this feature?
Best Answer
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,
Do that for every partition mounted in
/etc/fstab
of your machine, and then setup those images in VirtualBox.