[dba-Tech] Casper and Virtual PC 2007

Steve Erbach erbachs at gmail.com
Fri Jun 12 11:16:50 CDT 2009


Dear Group,

Continuing to dabble with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007.  I've increased
the number of VPCs on my host system steadily.  I now have:

DOS 6.22
Windows 95B
Windows 98SE
Windows 2000
Windows XP 32-bit (3 of them)
Windows 7 RC 32-bit
Windows Server 2003 32-bit

I eagerly downloaded the RC for Windows Server 2008 R2, but the
installation routine says I need a 64-bit environment.  With Virtual
PC 2007, I can't create a 64-bit virtual PC even though my host OS is
Windows XP x64.  Oh, well.

Anyway, one of the XP 32-bit VPCs is the one I managed to create from
an existing XP system after much labor.  My goal was to NOT have to
re-install any of the software from this existing system which was
about 8 old.  But I made the mistake of making the hard disk the same
size as the original: 20 GB.  It has about 25% free space on it and I
couldn't figure out how to convert the "fixed" virtual hard disk to a
"dynamic".

But then I remembered some other discussions about VPC on OT where
Lembit, I think, said that he used Acronis to copy virtual drives.  I
use Casper 5.0 and I thought that it wouldn't do the same sort of
thing.

But then, since I'm still unencumbered with a job, I thought I'd
create a new dynamic virtual hard disk with a 60 GB capacity and test
whether Casper 5.0 would, indeed, create a bootable copy of my 20 GB
virtual hard disk.

Right now Casper is cloning the 20 GB virtual drive onto the 60 GB
dynamic virtual drive.  I don't know yet whether it will actually
boot, but I should know if a short while.

Regards,

Steve Erbach
Neenah, WI
http://www.TheTownCrank.com



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