Prev: Problem in installing OS in VirtualPC 2007 SP1
Next: VM additions for Linux Fedora 12
From: Christian Barmala on 16 Jan 2010 09:18
Hi,

I used disk2vhd
(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx) on my WinXP
32 bit laptop to created a virtual harddisk "laptop.vhd". Then I creadted a
Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 64 bit and used this laptop.vhd instead of a
fresh empty vhd. When I tried to start the virtual machine, i.e. boot from
laptop.vhd, I just got a VM Window with a black screen inside.

Has anybody successfully converted a real machine to a virtual machine this
way? Does anybody have an idea what went wrong in my case?

Details:
- My laptop just has a single drive C: , size 111 GB, 30 GB used.
- I created the VHD on an external disk E: connected to the USB port.
- disk2vhd didn't provide many options to check or uncheck and didn't show
any error messages. When I started the process, it claimed to take 10 hours,
but when I came back after about 1 hour, it finished already.
- I can successfully mount and access the vhd file on my Win7 computer, but
I wasn't able to boot a virtual machine from it. I used 2GB of memory for
the VM, which is the same amount of memory as my laptop has.

Christian

From: Bo Berglund on 17 Jan 2010 03:24
On Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:18:09 +0100, "Christian Barmala"
<christian.barmala(a)gmx.net> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I used disk2vhd
>(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx) on my WinXP
>32 bit laptop to created a virtual harddisk "laptop.vhd". Then I creadted a
>Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 64 bit and used this laptop.vhd instead of a
>fresh empty vhd. When I tried to start the virtual machine, i.e. boot from
>laptop.vhd, I just got a VM Window with a black screen inside.
>
>Has anybody successfully converted a real machine to a virtual machine this
>way? Does anybody have an idea what went wrong in my case?
>
>Details:
>- My laptop just has a single drive C: , size 111 GB, 30 GB used.
>- I created the VHD on an external disk E: connected to the USB port.
>- disk2vhd didn't provide many options to check or uncheck and didn't show
>any error messages. When I started the process, it claimed to take 10 hours,
>but when I came back after about 1 hour, it finished already.
>- I can successfully mount and access the vhd file on my Win7 computer, but
>I wasn't able to boot a virtual machine from it. I used 2GB of memory for
>the VM, which is the same amount of memory as my laptop has.
>
>Christian

It is probably not a bootable VHD, just a backup copy of your disk.
But that aside, you will probably not succeed even if you managed to
make the VHD bootable because the laptop's hardware drivers are
embedded in this image and the hardware is *completely* different from
the hardware seen by an operating system running as a guest in VPC! So
my guess is that it will blusecreen as soon as you make it bootable.

To do Physical2Virtual conversion you need more sophisticated tools
than this....

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)
From: Paul Shapiro on 18 Jan 2010 22:04
The referenced disk2vhd utility is from SysInternals, now owned by
Microsoft, and claims to make a vhd that is bootable in Virtual PC. I
haven't used that utility, but all of the other SysInternals utilities I've
ever used worked exactly as claimed. Maybe try reading the instructions and
comments again on the download page to see if you missed anything. The
documentation says the vhd must be attached as an IDE disk. The source
system must be at least WinXP SP2. Do not attach to VHDs on the same system
on which you created them if you plan on booting from them. If you do so,
Windows will assign the VHD a new disk signature to avoid a collision with
the signature of the VHD's source disk. Windows references disks in the boot
configuration database (BCD) by disk signature, so when that happens Windows
booted in a VM will fail to locate the boot disk.

"Bo Berglund" <boberglund(a)myotherhome.sec> wrote in message
news:03i5l5dvbfbq9vj45sruhg4s992fi5tqtc(a)4ax.com...
> On Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:18:09 +0100, "Christian Barmala"
> <christian.barmala(a)gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I used disk2vhd
>>(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx) on my
>>WinXP
>>32 bit laptop to created a virtual harddisk "laptop.vhd". Then I creadted
>>a
>>Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 64 bit and used this laptop.vhd instead of
>>a
>>fresh empty vhd. When I tried to start the virtual machine, i.e. boot from
>>laptop.vhd, I just got a VM Window with a black screen inside.
>>
>>Has anybody successfully converted a real machine to a virtual machine
>>this
>>way? Does anybody have an idea what went wrong in my case?
>>
>>Details:
>>- My laptop just has a single drive C: , size 111 GB, 30 GB used.
>>- I created the VHD on an external disk E: connected to the USB port.
>>- disk2vhd didn't provide many options to check or uncheck and didn't show
>>any error messages. When I started the process, it claimed to take 10
>>hours,
>>but when I came back after about 1 hour, it finished already.
>>- I can successfully mount and access the vhd file on my Win7 computer,
>>but
>>I wasn't able to boot a virtual machine from it. I used 2GB of memory for
>>the VM, which is the same amount of memory as my laptop has.
>>
>>Christian
>
> It is probably not a bootable VHD, just a backup copy of your disk.
> But that aside, you will probably not succeed even if you managed to
> make the VHD bootable because the laptop's hardware drivers are
> embedded in this image and the hardware is *completely* different from
> the hardware seen by an operating system running as a guest in VPC! So
> my guess is that it will blusecreen as soon as you make it bootable.
>
> To do Physical2Virtual conversion you need more sophisticated tools
> than this....
> --
> Bo Berglund (Sweden)

From: Robert Comer on 19 Jan 2010 08:51
>Do not attach to VHDs on the same system
>on which you created them if you plan on booting from them. If you do so,
>Windows will assign the VHD a new disk signature to avoid a collision with
>the signature of the VHD's source disk.

That's only if you mount it on the host for boot, running it in a VM
is not a problem.

--
Bob Comer



On Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:04:12 -0500, "Paul Shapiro"
<paul(a)hideme.broadwayData.com> wrote:

>The referenced disk2vhd utility is from SysInternals, now owned by
>Microsoft, and claims to make a vhd that is bootable in Virtual PC. I
>haven't used that utility, but all of the other SysInternals utilities I've
>ever used worked exactly as claimed. Maybe try reading the instructions and
>comments again on the download page to see if you missed anything. The
>documentation says the vhd must be attached as an IDE disk. The source
>system must be at least WinXP SP2. Do not attach to VHDs on the same system
>on which you created them if you plan on booting from them. If you do so,
>Windows will assign the VHD a new disk signature to avoid a collision with
>the signature of the VHD's source disk. Windows references disks in the boot
>configuration database (BCD) by disk signature, so when that happens Windows
>booted in a VM will fail to locate the boot disk.
>
>"Bo Berglund" <boberglund(a)myotherhome.sec> wrote in message
>news:03i5l5dvbfbq9vj45sruhg4s992fi5tqtc(a)4ax.com...
>> On Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:18:09 +0100, "Christian Barmala"
>> <christian.barmala(a)gmx.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>I used disk2vhd
>>>(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx) on my
>>>WinXP
>>>32 bit laptop to created a virtual harddisk "laptop.vhd". Then I creadted
>>>a
>>>Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 64 bit and used this laptop.vhd instead of
>>>a
>>>fresh empty vhd. When I tried to start the virtual machine, i.e. boot from
>>>laptop.vhd, I just got a VM Window with a black screen inside.
>>>
>>>Has anybody successfully converted a real machine to a virtual machine
>>>this
>>>way? Does anybody have an idea what went wrong in my case?
>>>
>>>Details:
>>>- My laptop just has a single drive C: , size 111 GB, 30 GB used.
>>>- I created the VHD on an external disk E: connected to the USB port.
>>>- disk2vhd didn't provide many options to check or uncheck and didn't show
>>>any error messages. When I started the process, it claimed to take 10
>>>hours,
>>>but when I came back after about 1 hour, it finished already.
>>>- I can successfully mount and access the vhd file on my Win7 computer,
>>>but
>>>I wasn't able to boot a virtual machine from it. I used 2GB of memory for
>>>the VM, which is the same amount of memory as my laptop has.
>>>
>>>Christian
>>
>> It is probably not a bootable VHD, just a backup copy of your disk.
>> But that aside, you will probably not succeed even if you managed to
>> make the VHD bootable because the laptop's hardware drivers are
>> embedded in this image and the hardware is *completely* different from
>> the hardware seen by an operating system running as a guest in VPC! So
>> my guess is that it will blusecreen as soon as you make it bootable.
>>
>> To do Physical2Virtual conversion you need more sophisticated tools
>> than this....
>> --
>> Bo Berglund (Sweden)
From: Bo Berglund on 19 Jan 2010 15:45
On Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:51:25 -0500, Robert Comer
<bobcomer-removeme-(a)mindspring.com> wrote:

>>Do not attach to VHDs on the same system
>>on which you created them if you plan on booting from them. If you do so,
>>Windows will assign the VHD a new disk signature to avoid a collision with
>>the signature of the VHD's source disk.
>
>That's only if you mount it on the host for boot, running it in a VM
>is not a problem.

Today I used both disk2vhd and VMWare Converter 4 to test P2V on a
physical (HP) workstation with a 160 Gb drive. Only 32 Gb of tha is
actually used.

The disk2vhd tool does not give you an option to resize the disk,
which makes the P2V conversion rather more difficult and time
consuming than it could have been when dealing with large source disks
into VPC2007.

The disk2vhd has an option to "Fix up HAL for VirtualPC", which I
guess is a way to prepare for the differences in hardware. I used
this. The process took about 2 hours and resulted in a VHD file with a
38.9 Gb size. This file was placed on the C: drive of the source disk
itself, possible thanks to the snapshot capability of XP.

VMWare Converter 4 does more, it creates a complete virtual machine
with all the settings appropriate for the guest taken from the
physical machine and the limitations of the target virtual environment
(WS 6.5 compatible).
And it has the option of specifying the target drive size, so I set it
to be 100 Gb.
Conversion took about 1:20 hours to finish with the result written to
a USB connected drive on the source PC. The size of the final disk
file was 24.8 Gb. Amazingly this is less than what is reported as the
used capacity on the source PC!

Tomorrow I will try and start up these machines in VPC2007-SP1 (the
VHD) and VMWare Workstation 7 (the VMDK).
Will be interesting to see what will happen....

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)
 |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2 3 4
Prev: Problem in installing OS in VirtualPC 2007 SP1
Next: VM additions for Linux Fedora 12