Taking a VM from virtualbox to install on a hard drive pc?

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josephchrzempiec
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Joined: 8. Aug 2021, 02:55

Taking a VM from virtualbox to install on a hard drive pc?

Post by josephchrzempiec »

Hello I'm unsure if I post this in the right place. If not i'm sorry this is my very firat post And I'm nore sure where this goes at.

My question is I have a old Windows me VM setup this the way i like it. However I'm unsure how i can transfer it from a Vm to a hard drive to be on a pc without virtualbox being on it. Is there such a way?


Joseph
scottgus1
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Re: Taking a VM from virtualbox to install on a hard drive pc?

Post by scottgus1 »

It sounds like you want to take ME from a VM and transfer it to a physical PC. Normally this process goes the other way and is called Physical to Virtual, or P2V. The principles are the same going virtual to physical.

Many folks have transferred XP & later in a P2V, I'm not sure if ME could handle the move without a fresh install. You might also need an older computer so that ME would have drivers for the hardware.

Web-search "ME P2V" for general experiences or "ME P2V site:forums.virtualbox.org" for Virtualbox forum experiences, if any. You might have to bite the bullet and do a fresh install. Config files for installed programs might be directly copyable.
mpack
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Re: Taking a VM from virtualbox to install on a hard drive pc?

Post by mpack »

I don't recall any previous discussion of P2Ving (or V2Ping) an ME install. I think probably there just were never that many ME users.

I'd be wary. The year 2000, and especially in WinDOS, was early days for USB, and for plug and play, and for user friendly networking. In Win98SE you needed a custom (vendor supplied) USB driver for any mass storage device as there was no native support in the OS. I don't know what ME does, but my memory says that native USB drive support didn't happen until XP. So how are you going to transport the ME image? What software will you use to install it? Running the software from what drive?

Is it an old PC too?

Installing ME from scratch is going to be the simplest option, provided it's old hardware that ME has native drivers for, on the install CD - since I'm pretty sure that fetching drivers from the Internet while installing was not a thing back then either.
josephchrzempiec
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Joined: 8. Aug 2021, 02:55

Re: Taking a VM from virtualbox to install on a hard drive pc?

Post by josephchrzempiec »

Hello, About 5 or 6 years old I lost my Disc for my windows ME and i couldn't get another because of money problems. I still had my license key. What i did i downloaded the Iso for it and install it in virtualbox. Well time had gone by and its setup for a retro gaming system i gave to my brother. Sense he doesn't run VM or know how to. I would like to move it to a physical PC for him. I do have one that I have build and I do know the specs of building one. I'm just not much of a programmer. And starting over with a new install and confuring everything would be a nightmare. All my old games are on there.

Edit: I'm okay with drives. I do have them for this system.


Joseph
gda000
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Joined: 8. Dec 2021, 22:36

Re: Taking a VM from virtualbox to install on a hard drive pc?

Post by gda000 »

Windows 31 95 98 ME won't run on newer hardware. CPU, memory, I/O just too fast. you need an older mobo and chip.
scottgus1
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Re: Taking a VM from virtualbox to install on a hard drive pc?

Post by scottgus1 »

@gda000, OP's idea is to bring ME into a Virtualbox VM, which does run 95/98/ME, and maybe 3.1.
mpack
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Re: Taking a VM from virtualbox to install on a hard drive pc?

Post by mpack »

scottgus1 wrote:and maybe 3.1.
And definitely 3.1. Here's a shot of the Win3.1 desktop running in VirtualBox 6.1.30 on my home PC running Win10-64bit(21H1), on an Intel i9-10900K CPU. I cropped the desktop a bit because it was grabbed from my 4K monitor, and that Win3.1 textured mono desktop looks terrible if you try to shrink the image.
Image4.png
Image4.png (15.4 KiB) Viewed 21805 times
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