existing WinXP to .vdi

This is for discussing general topics about how to use VirtualBox.
Ingo
Volunteer
Posts: 731
Joined: 22. Aug 2007, 10:13
Location: Germany

Post by Ingo »

Hi bella za,
welcome here.
I'm only familiar with linux hosts so I can't help you on this.
But installing an operating system on a virtual machine from scratch is the most trouble-free way to get it running. I'm afraid you are running in much more trouble if you try to get it from VMWare. The former method should work before going on with other issues.
cornbread
Posts: 82
Joined: 22. Dec 2007, 05:36

not worth your time

Post by cornbread »

even if you manage to get your current partition to .vdi you will most likely never get past the BSOD issues plagued by agp440.sys and mup.sys. tried several times.
Ingo
Volunteer
Posts: 731
Joined: 22. Aug 2007, 10:13
Location: Germany

Post by Ingo »

Hi cornbread,
have you simply tried to disable agp440.sys and/or mup.sys?
I've done this (with another driver) by attaching the VDI as primary slave to my managing VM. Start it and rename
D:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\agp440.sys to
"D:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\agp440.sys disabled".
Then try to boot the VDI.
cornbread
Posts: 82
Joined: 22. Dec 2007, 05:36

yes

Post by cornbread »

Ingo I have done this for several machines then they get stuck at mup.sys. I have tried renaming agp440.sys and removing it from boot with xp recovery console.
tom909
Posts: 28
Joined: 3. Feb 2008, 07:37

Post by tom909 »

I followed the directions above to make a vdi out of a running win2000 disk. I get to the point, where windows starts to start up: I am seeing black screen with the grey text and progress bar that says Starting up windows, and in the bottom the progress bar is moving all the way to the end, but then it stops, nothing happens, screen stays the same, no error message no BSOD, as I would expect if its the "MergeIDE" problem.

its not the agp problem since original machine does not have agp, and I checked that the sys file is actually not in use.

I tried repairing it as described in Migrate. This goes all the way through, but does not solve this problem.

Any hints on this?

Thanks Tom
Samuel Herzog
Posts: 14
Joined: 6. Oct 2007, 14:23

Post by Samuel Herzog »

I had a similar problem when I moved my real labtop into a virtualbox.
There were some graphics and wireless driver's installed which of course did not like to be inside a virtual machine.


If you can start Windows in save mode, then I recommend you to uninstall
all hardware dependend Software and also the anti-virus software.

Then try to restart again in normal mode.
And re-install the antivirus stuff.
tom909
Posts: 28
Joined: 3. Feb 2008, 07:37

Post by tom909 »

and safe mode also did not work
Ingo
Volunteer
Posts: 731
Joined: 22. Aug 2007, 10:13
Location: Germany

Post by Ingo »

tom909 wrote:I get to the point, where windows starts to start up: I am seeing black screen [...]
Look at this:
User Manual wrote:11.2.2 Windows 2000 installation failures
When installing Windows 2000 guests, you might run into one of the following issues: [...]
The simplest way to a complex system is to start with a simple system.
htc
Posts: 4
Joined: 23. Feb 2008, 16:21

Post by htc »

tom909 wrote:I followed the directions above to make a vdi out of a running win2000 disk. I get to the point, where windows starts to start up: I am seeing black screen with the grey text and progress bar that says Starting up windows, and in the bottom the progress bar is moving all the way to the end, but then it stops, nothing happens, screen stays the same, no error message no BSOD, as I would expect if its the "MergeIDE" problem.

its not the agp problem since original machine does not have agp, and I checked that the sys file is actually not in use.

I tried repairing it as described in Migrate. This goes all the way through, but does not solve this problem.

Any hints on this?

Thanks Tom
no idea if this will work but i had almost exactly the same problem when tryin a fresh install of 2kpro on a vm with ws5 would just "freeze" about 7/8 thru the strip filling up.

i asked the vm forum all sorts a crap and no solution then tried setting the vm process affinity(on host which is amd dual core) to a single core and whamo no problems since, just use single core to install and i could then boot whatever np using dual.

-htc

now i came here looking to see if p2v was possible w/ VB i have ws5 and don't feel like giving them another $100 to upgrade my $230 version of ws5, looks like off to study up on 9.9 :wink: .
tom909
Posts: 28
Joined: 3. Feb 2008, 07:37

Post by tom909 »

[quote="htc"]
no idea if this will work but i had almost exactly the same problem when tryin a fresh install of 2kpro on a vm with ws5 would just "freeze" about 7/8 thru the strip filling up.

i asked the vm forum all sorts a crap and no solution then tried setting the vm process affinity(on host which is amd dual core) to a single core and whamo no problems since, just use single core to install and i could then boot whatever np using dual.

-htc

now i came here looking to see if p2v was possible w/ VB i have ws5 and don't feel like giving them another $100 to upgrade my $230 version of ws5, looks like off to study up on 9.9 :wink: . [/quote]


How can I change the process affinity? my host machine is intel dual core running opensuse 64 10.3

thanks
htc
Posts: 4
Joined: 23. Feb 2008, 16:21

Post by htc »

not sure in xp i use task manager>>processes, pick the process right click and select affinity for a single core.
bjlockie

Post by bjlockie »

I have an existing WinXP partition that I can boot.
I would like to clone it (so it is not touched anymore) and then use VirtualBox under Linux to install the clone as a guest OS.
Then hopefully I can exclusively boot Linux.
I'd rather not reinstall XP under VirtualBox because what I have works.

Can I do this yet?
This is the primary stumbling block to me using VirtualBox.
I do NOT want to use raw disk access.
Arcath
Posts: 6
Joined: 25. Oct 2007, 10:09

Post by Arcath »

I have a few Hard Drives with differing settings that are setup for different groups of PCs, i ghost the HDD when a new PC is added to a group, but the source HDD is becoming increasingly out of date, i want to be able to ghost the HDDs to a file on a network server, and then use virtual box to boot them and update them etc... and then ghost the file onto new PCs... is this possible?
stony999
Posts: 38
Joined: 29. Oct 2007, 01:38

Post by stony999 »

I also tried to do that in several ways with no success. I got always stuck when the destination machine started to boot.

I finally installed Windows from scratch on the virtual machine and used an application named PC-Mover (you can get it starting from about 20Eur at amazon or ebay) to move all my data, programs, registry settings and so on from my physical machine to the virtual machine.
It worked for about 90-95 % of all programs. With some finetuning I got almost every program to work. You can even migrate from an old Windows version (e.g.Win98 to a new Version (e.g. Vista))

That way I migrated my old Windows Laptop into to a virtual machine on my new Ubuntu laptop and saved a LOT of time and it didn't cost a fortune.
Entity
Posts: 100
Joined: 31. Dec 2007, 19:28
Primary OS: Mandriva
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: xp,mandriva,ubuntu,vista,7

Post by Entity »

Curiously i haven't had any kind of problems to boot the XP from a physical machine in VirtualBox, not even those mentioned in that guide. Could it be because the computer i cloned is very old? (2001)


Btw to do the image, i just run "dd" from a linux live cd to do the dump, and then vboxmanage convertdd to convert it into a vdi. Don't know if the method of dumping may be related to success or not, because i firstly tried to do the dump using winhex inside the machine to clone, and the dump was corrupt and wouldn't boot at all.
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