[dba-Tech] New virtual drive

Mark Breen marklbreen at gmail.com
Wed Jan 13 03:07:47 CST 2010


Hello Steve,


2010/1/12 Steve Erbach <erbachs at gmail.com>

> Mr. President,
>
> I am honored, sir, to offer my poor knowledge to help you out!
>

Ha ha, I love it,

Mark



>
> This applies to Microsoft Virtual PC.
>
> I used two free products to create VHDs from existing *Windows XP
> Pro*systems: WinImage (
> http://www.winimage.com/download.htm) and Sysinternals Disk2vhd (
> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx).  When I
> ran
> these programs on my old workstations, I simply saved the VHDs on my main
> system over the network.
>
> Then I created the VMs and used an ISO of the Windows XP installation disk
> on each VM to do a repair installation of XP.  I presume that you know that
> that DOESN'T mean that first "repair" or recover choice on the first
> Windows
> installation screen.  You have to pick a regular install of Windows...then
> the installation program detects that a version of Windows already exists
> and that you want to repair the existing installation.
>
> Those are the two basic steps.  I had a hell of a time with my second
> attempt at doing this since the physical workstation's hard disk had
> registry errors.  But after I ran PCTools Registry Mechanic, I used
> Disk2vhd
> to make the VHD and then successfully did a Windows repair and voilá!
>
> I tried doing the same process with an old Windows 95 laptop but I haven't
> been successful.  Maybe a repair installation of Windows 98 would work, I
> don't know from personal experience.  I, like Drew, have got multiple
> Windows VMs: Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, and 7 to go along with the two
> "conversion" VMs I mentioned.  I also have a DOS VM I made with Drew's
> help.
> Installing those versions of Windows and DOS was pretty straightforward.
>
> For older versions of Windows I did need to use the older version of
> Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 to get the Virtual Machine Additions to work.
>
> Does that help?
>
> I would also say that DOS apps run well under Windows XP, even ones that
> use
> memory-resident utilities.  Windows 98 ran DOS apps better than Windows
> 2000
> did, but XP outshines either by a long way.
>
> Regards,
>
> Steve Erbach
> Neenah, WI
>
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 10:30 AM, John Bartow <john at winhaven.net> wrote:
>
> > Hi Steve,
> > What technique do you use for doing this?
> >
> > I am doing a job this week where I'm setting up VPC VMs on a new XP
> > machine.
> >
> > The client currently runs a number of DOS apps on a Win98 PC.
> >
> > My plans are to create a DOS VM and copy the DOS apps/files over to it
> and
> > see if I can skip Win98 altogether. But there may also be some little
> used
> > applications on this PC that may require Win98. The problem is that this
> is
> > a production machine and I can't have the time with it to determine this
> > until I get the apps/files/hardware all working for the DOS programs
> which
> > are vital to daily ops. Once that is accomplished I can determine if I
> need
> > to image the HD and create a Win98 VM.
> >
> > I was planning on using Acronis for imaging the HD and converting to a
> > Win98
> > VM this but would welcome any suggestions.
> >
> > John B.
> >
> >
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