Steve Erbach
erbachs at gmail.com
Wed Jan 13 10:36:14 CST 2010
Mark, >> First to Steve: you mentioned that you had to use an XP Cd to perform a repair / upgrade. Is that because the machine was Win98? Could you not have left it running as Win98. The reason I ask is I have an XP Laptop I want to P2V so I am wondering will I still need to dig out a XP disk, or if I am happy with the OS, can I use the tools you kindly recommdned and I will be good to go. << I'm sorry if I confused the issue. John asked about Windows 98. I have not converted a Windows 98 machine to a VM...I've only done it successfully with two Windows XP Pro machines. I had to dig out the XP disk because converting an existing physical XP machine to a VM requires that Windows XP be informed as to the different hardware available to it. It's similar to extracting a Windows hard disk from one machine and installing it into a completely different PC and trying to get it to boot. You have to run a repair on Windows to get it to recognize the new hardware and install the necessary drivers. The Sysinternals Disk2vhd program simply converts the existing hard disk to a VHD file with no alteration of the contents of the drive. The repair has to be done on Windows to get it to boot as a VM using Microsoft Virtual PC. My educated guess would be that something similar has to be done with any other virtualizing software before a converted bootable drive can be made to run under a virtualization scheme. My 2nd XP machine that I converted to a VM was a royal pain in the neck because its registry was a little flaky. I finally used PCTools Registry Mechanic to iron out its wobbles. That allowed a "clean" VHD to be created. THEN I could repair the Windows install. Regards, Steve Erbach Neenah, WI On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 3:06 AM, Mark Breen <marklbreen at gmail.com> wrote: > Hello All, > > I am reading this thread with baited breath. > > ( > By they way, is that the correct spelling of baited, should it be bated, as > in unabated. > > Haha, I just googled this question, and if you do not mind, I will leave it > here for amusement > http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bai1.htm > http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/bated-breath.html > > ) > > > Back to the thread. > > First to Steve: you mentioned that you had to use an XP Cd to perform a > repair / upgrade. Is that because the machine was Win98? Could you not > have left it running as Win98. The reason I ask is I have an XP Laptop I > want to P2V so I am wondering will I still need to dig out a XP disk, or if > I am happy with the OS, can I use the tools you kindly recommdned and I > will > be good to go. > > To Bobby:My brother is trying to convince me to switch to VMWare instead of > VM by MS, including the HyperV Services that I am happy with on W2k8. Do > you think that VM ware is better, If so, should I try to install from > scratch or can I load it on top of W2k8. I get the impression from a first > pass on the VM ware site that there are two breeds of VM ware, on that > installs over an existing OS and one that installs on a bare metal box - is > that a correct assumption? If so, I have to assume that the bare metal box > is much better. > > > To All: > This year I build a number of VM machines, Win2k3, 2k8, Vista, Win7, XP Pro > etc. My experience was pretty much good. I can use them as IIS Servers, > SQL Servers etc with no probs. However, when I try to use the Vista or the > W7 machine as a Front End machine, IOW as a machine where the primary > function is to server a fast GUI then I was dis-satasfied. IOW, I can use > it for a few minutes or hours even, but when I was the sort of response > time > you get from a native machine, the VM was not giving it. Sure it can load > MS word or VS2008, but I found small delays of 1/2 second to be tireseome > when traversing VS2008 or SSMS etc. > > IOW, my personal summary was for rapid response from a GUI stick with > physical machine, but the VM were really really good as a second choice. > > I built up a library of machine that I do not touch, and a second library > that I use, but can delete and replace with the clean machine at anytime. > > One last thing, you can move machines from Virtual Server to HyperV, but > you > have to re-activate Windows when you move them. > One other last thing, since I saw how good HyperV is, I do not wish to ever > use Virtual Server again. > AFAIK, HyperV requires W2k8 > > Hope someone benefits from this and you do not have to wait with bated > breath again like me:) > > Mark > > > > > > 2010/1/13 Bobby Heid <bheid at sc.rr.com> > > > John, > > > > I used VMware Converter (http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/) to > > convert my Vista64 PC using a Ghost 14 backup image to a VM with great > > success. I think, from what I read, that doing V2PC for stuff other than > > Vista is pretty easy. > > > > Bobby >