virtualbox.org

Hi,

I will relate my experience passing a real windows XP installation to a virtual machine.

I had a machine that I only use for business software. Its a waste a machine only for a software. I want to use that machine as a media center on my room.

So I start investigating how I can pass this machine (windows XP + business software) to a virtual machine. I don't install the software on my computer for security reasons and because every time I change computer I have to reinstall the software and re-activate. I want to stop having this trouble.

In a virtual machine I can work whit the software on whatever machine I want.

Since I do not discover a complete How To I Will relate how have susses.

I

I follow this instructions Paulo Martins Freitas — Trocando o Windows XP de Máquina. They are in Portuguese so I will translate:

"Switching from Windows XP machine.
Normally when you take a HD with a Windows XP machine and put the HD on another machine you will get the famous blue screen of death - GPF (General Protection Fault)

Go back to the old motherboard. Boot the XP. Extract the files:

• Atapi.sys
  Intelide.sys
  Pciide.sys
  Pciidex.sys

from C:\Windows\Driver Cache\I386\Driver.cab and copy these files to the C:\Windows\System32\Drivers.

NOTE: Maybe because this is a old info, I did not find all the files on drivers.cab, but on the same folder there is sp2.cab and sp3.cab and on those 3 files you will find the necessary files.

In Windows Explorer, double-click the file that Mergeide.reg. When Windows ask, answer yes to add the file Mergeide.reg to the registry. You should receive a message that the information was added to the registry.

NOTE: You can find instructions on how to create Mergeide.reg on Microsoft website http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314082

Shut down Windows, and transfer the HD to the new machine to see if it worked.

II

I create a virtual machine to receive windows xp with a 40GB hard drive. What I was trying to do is to pass my disk from one machine to another, being anther a virtual machine.

I follow the instructions on Virtual box manual to access from from the virtual machine my real HD --> no problems here!

III

I put the real HD as slave on the VM and boot the VM with Hiren Boot CD to clone the real HD to the virtual one. No problem, but it took 9 hours to clone the HD with 20GB of info.

IV

I disconnect the real HD from the VM, and now I have a normal VM with the content of my old HD.

Time to boot --> No boot, nine hours waiting for nothing I think. But if I press F8 I access the boot screen to boot windows in safe mode. Was a relief, the info was there, now is just resolve one normal problem of a non booting windows. (I cannot boot in safe mode was well.)

I mount a Windows XP ISO on virtual machine and start the repair process. Attention that the repair menu is not the Recovery console. And Windows XP ISOs that have been modified can not have this menu.

The repair fail at some point, blue screen of death. So I boot with ERD commander to analyse the crash file and the result was that the problem was on intelppm.sys. So I boot with Hiren again and rename this file.

EUREKA the repair was successful till the end. And now I have my Old XP on a Virtual machine.

NOTE: I don't no if the first step was any helpful, but maybe if someone try windows will boot immediately and do not have to do the rest of the steps.

Paulo Gerardo from Portugal

Hi

I experienced similar problems to transfer my old machine to a virtual one.
I did it this way:
- Prepare the old Win XP for migration with SysPrep.exe (download from MS web site)
- Create an image of the old HD using Partition Saving (http://damien.guibouret.free.fr/), stored to a USB external HD
- On the new laptop create a virtual machine with new HD and configure it to receive USB connections from the host
- connect the USB HD to the new laptop and run Partition Saving on the virtual machine
- restore the old HD in the virtual machine HD

then we get this blue screen that disappears when we remove or just rename the file %system%/sytem32/drivers/intelppm.sys

here we are... all in all it takes very long time... has anyone got a better way ?

JBB

There is a topic about this in the Windows Guests forum. Please check that and continue there. This isn't really a host issue, as the 'Host' will become the Guest.