Best way to clone Windows 10 guest?

Discussions about using Windows guests in VirtualBox.
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nvtc
Posts: 25
Joined: 3. Mar 2021, 11:41

Best way to clone Windows 10 guest?

Post by nvtc »

So, I've created a Windows 10 guest on my Windows 10 host to use it for access to a customer's VPN. When logging in with their VPN client, all other network connections are disconnected so I can't be logged in to their VPN and access web pages or make phone calls via VoIP from my host simultaneously. Connecting to their VPN from my Virtualbox guest however cuts all other connections for the guest only so I can be logged in to their VPN and do other stuff from my host. So far, so good.

Now I'd like to copy this guest over to my colleague's Windows 10 laptop so he can fill in for me when I'm on vacation. The Windows 10 on the guest has no yet been activated so I'm wondering if it's enough to copy over the guest.vdi to his machine and simply add it via Virtualbox Manager? Will the guest "adapt" to the underlying hardware of his laptop (that differs from mine) and he can just use it? Or do I have to modify the guest's hardware IDs or something first? Thx!
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Best way to clone Windows 10 guest?

Post by mpack »

nvtc wrote: I'm wondering if it's enough to copy over the guest.vdi
I can never stop being amazing at user fixation on the VDI file: just because it's the biggest file doesn't mean it's the only important one! To correctly move a VM you need to move the entire VM folder. See Howto: Move a VM.

Note that once your colleague activates Windows 10, that will mean you can no longer use that product key. That's unless you and your colleagues PCs are identical (in particular, identical CPUs), though I'm not sure it works even then, because other things such as network connections are also detectable. XP may not have noticed, but Windows 10 comes from an era that is very aware of VMs.

The best way to deal with the activation issue is to buy a second Win10 license, and use the "add new product key" feature in Windows 10 to change one of the copies. All installed software should continue to work.
nvtc
Posts: 25
Joined: 3. Mar 2021, 11:41

Re: Best way to clone Windows 10 guest?

Post by nvtc »

Right, of course I'll copy over the entire folder, then open the manager, select tools and then click on add. With Win 10 being aware of running in a VM, I guess it should work. Gonna report back if it doesn't.
nvtc
Posts: 25
Joined: 3. Mar 2021, 11:41

Re: Best way to clone Windows 10 guest?

Post by nvtc »

So, I've installed Virtualbox on my colleagues laptop, copied over the entire folder with the VM and added it in the manager and stopped it so it would have to reboot. Clicking on start however pops up this message:

"System Acceleration Settings: The hardware virtualization is enabled in the Acceleration section of the system although it is not supported from the host system. It should be disabled in order to start the visual system.

despite the Intel virtualization techniques being enabled in his laptop's BIOS. Now what can I do?
Bryant
Posts: 9
Joined: 12. Jun 2019, 17:45

Re: Best way to clone Windows 10 guest?

Post by Bryant »

So try this in an admin cmd prompt.

Code: Select all

systeminfo | find "Virtualization"
nvtc wrote:So, I've installed Virtualbox on my colleagues laptop, copied over the entire folder with the VM and added it in the manager and stopped it so it would have to reboot. Clicking on start however pops up this message:

"System Acceleration Settings: The hardware virtualization is enabled in the Acceleration section of the system although it is not supported from the host system. It should be disabled in order to start the visual system.

despite the Intel virtualization techniques being enabled in his laptop's BIOS. Now what can I do?
nvtc
Posts: 25
Joined: 3. Mar 2021, 11:41

Re: Best way to clone Windows 10 guest?

Post by nvtc »

So, we finally had the time to continue with this and what actually did work was disabling the VTX settings in the BIOS and then re-enabling them. The moment that was done, my VM started flawlessly on my colleagues machine. Thx, y'all!

That said, I've been working with mine in the meantime and apparently Windows Updates bloat has filled up my HD and when I try to resize it from 20 to 30 GB with

vboxmanage modifyhd 'myvm.vdi' --resize 28610

I get the message "could not get the storage format of the medium". I've shut down the machine before doing that and it otherwise works fine with VirtualBox Manager so how come the format is not recognized?
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Best way to clone Windows 10 guest?

Post by mpack »

nvtc wrote:what actually did work was disabling the VTX settings in the BIOS and then re-enabling them
I suspect your fix is only temporary. It sounds like you have Hyper-v enabled somewhere. It turned itself off when VT-x was disabled. Now that VT-x is available again it may only be a matter of time until it notices and re-enables itself.

If VBoxManage doesn't recognize a VDI then it isn't a VDI.
nvtc
Posts: 25
Joined: 3. Mar 2021, 11:41

Re: Best way to clone Windows 10 guest?

Post by nvtc »

Well, I've used your tool CloneVDI to resize it which suggests it is. However, a week or so later the machine would not start up so I've created a new one now with proper size.

The only problem I have now is that the hotkeys CTRL+Circumflex I use to make screenshots of the active window with FastStone Capture does not work when the VM is active. I guess, it's because keyboard auto capture is on. Is there a way to exclude a key combo from being executed on the guest and have it work on the host instead? In this case, the whole VM window would be screenshotted instead of only the active window inside but that's fine. Thx.
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Best way to clone Windows 10 guest?

Post by mpack »

nvtc wrote:Well, I've used your tool CloneVDI to resize it which suggests it is.
Are you referring to my final sentence?

If so: no, what that suggests is that you gave CloneVDI something other than you gave to VBoxManage. There is no way CloneVDI understands VDI better than VBoxManage - we would have noticed.

If you want someone to comment on your startup problems then you need to provide diagnostics. But if it's the same message being discussed so far then there's no way for VDI formatting parameters to affect how VT-x is used. I already mentioned what does affect it.
nvtc
Posts: 25
Joined: 3. Mar 2021, 11:41

Re: Best way to clone Windows 10 guest?

Post by nvtc »

Startup problems? Everything is working fine now that I've created a new properly sized machine. Still, I would like to make screenshots of what's happening on the guest every now and then and I'd prefer to do them on the host so I don't have to install my screenshot tool on the guest and copy over the files created when pressing CTRL+Zirkumflex. My guess: the keyboard is captured by the guest so this does not work. But apparently pressing the host key and then pressing CTRL-Zirkumflex does the trick so I guess this thread could be closed now.
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