Need help with converting native WinXP to VDI

[Zeikcied]

A little over a week ago, I attempted to follow tutorials on this board and convert an existing Windows XP install to a virtual drive. I have had VirtualBox running the physical partition for a while now, and I wanted to make it a virtual drive instead. But I ran into some problems that kept me from following the tutorials. (I am using Kubuntu Jaunty, if that makes a difference.)

One tutorial mentioned a program called SelfImage. When I ran that in my WinXP VM, the program didn't seem to work properly. I clicked on Drive, and the drop-down menu was completely empty and not rendering properly.

Another tutorial used HDClone. That would have worked, but I guess the way I set up the .vmdk file for using the physical partition, it has the entire physical drive in the VM and not just the WinXP partition (I have two ext4 partitions on that drive). So I can't use the free version of HDClone, as it only has Drive-to-Drive copying, and I don't think it will like copying the full 200 Gig physical drive to a 19 Gig virtual drive.

Some other tutorials mentioned use of a Windows XP recovery disc, which I don't have. (WinXP came pre-installed, and Compaq doesn't give recovery discs.) Others mentioned a second WinXP virtual drive (if I had that, I wouldn't need to copy the physical drive).

One method that did almost work was using Gparted. The recovery disc mentioned on that tutorial failed, as Gparted crashed during the copy. Luckily I had an iso image of the Kubuntu Jaunty install disc, so I booted that and set up Gparted, and copied the partition over. Everything seemed to go well. The VM booted using the virtual drive, WinXP scanned the new drive and rebooted, but then it got stuck. It got up to the Welcome screen (where it usually auto-logs in to the default account), only instead of "Welcome" it shows the Windows XP name and logo. It just hangs at that screen and doesn't budge. No drive activity or anything.

After that, I was at a complete loss. I have no idea what to do. I am able to get to the Recovery Console (the Windows boot manager gives me the option of using that), but I have no idea what commands to use or if any of them will help. I got extremely frustrated and gave up, and now a week later I've decided to find out if anyone here can help me out.

[TerryE]

There is a stick at the top of this forum on how to dual-boot XP. OK the focus is on starting with a clean install but may of the issues that you need to address are covered here. You really don't need any tools other than a liveCD ISO. I am surprise that you say that HP don't give recovery disks. Most vendors at least have an option to create a recovery CD for recovery purposes. Before you start, you should clean up your image by defragging it and running sDelete (see my tutorial All about VDIs). You can create a pseudo VMDK which uses a createrawvmdk command to map the NTFS partition and just set up your VM with a blank VDI on HD0 and this on HD1. As you say Gparted will copy the partition for you, but you then need to run fixmbr to create an MBR on the VDI and use fdisk to activate your XP partition. You probably then need to run fixboot to fix up the pointers in the partition bootstrap. (Wikipedia explains how this all works). There are various background resources discussed in the above topic on such issues as the driver chain. Basically the virtual hardware looks very different to the real underlying hardware, and XP unlike Linux is very intolerant to changes in underlying hardware. Also you have the issue of XP activation. You, HP and MS have entered into a licence agreement to run your copy of XP on a specific HP PC. Even though the VM is running on this very machine, it still looks sufficiently different to trigger the anti-copy defences in the S/W. Again all these issues are discussed in the tutorial topics, so have a search.

Yes, this is doable, but it is sufficiently complicated not to be for the faint-heated. There are lots of issues to overcome. You need to be willing to do a lot of research, and each case is sufficiently different that you aren't going to get a complete 1-2-3 Howto on this.

[Zeikcied]

I already have the pseudo vmdk. As I said, I've been using the physical partition within a VM for a while now. I used the createrawvmdk command with the -mbr option to use a created mbr to bypass it looking for GRUB. I already reactivated WinXP using the code so it boots on the VM hardware.

I'm not trying to get the physical partition to boot in a VM. I'm trying to copy the physical partition to a virtual drive (a .vdi file). When I used Gparted to copy the WinXP partition to a virtual drive, everything seemed to work well. WinXP did technically boot, but it stopped at the Welcome screen and froze. I doubt that's an issue with the boot loader.

[TerryE]

WinXP did technically boot, but it stopped at the Welcome screen and froze.

No this is a driver chain issue. Please read the migration guides. If you boot in diagnostic mode you will see that the boot sequence stalls as the drivers are being loaded, e.g. mup.sys. Unlike Linux drivers, many windows drivers just stall the boot sequence if they don't find their target hardware rather than failing gracefully and allowing the boot sequence to continue.

You need to run MergeIDE and you need to disable any drivers which relate to usb and other physical hardware. You'll have a better chance booting into a minimal safe mode. Once you've managed to boot, you can install VBox guest additions, then rediscover the VBox H/W.

[Zeikcied]

But the hardware is the same. The only thing that is different is that I'm taking the physical partition and moving it to a virtual drive.

I used a guide on the Ubuntu Forums for setting up a vmdk file to read the physical WinXP partition, and it worked. Windows XP boots within the VirtualBox VM with no problem. I set up the hardware profile named "Virtual," and I reactivated the VM. So Windows XP is running just fine within the virtual machine, using the virtual hardware. The only difference is that I'm trying to copy the partition over from the physical drive to a virtual drive.

It's running under the same VM, just on a virtual drive. So maybe I just don't get something, but I don't see how copying the partition is going to make Windows XP fail to read any of the virtual hardware it's been running on for the past several months, with the VirtualBox Guest Additions installed, as well.

I'm not trying to migrate it. WinXP has already been migrated to a VM. I just want to copy the physical partition to a virtual drive.

[TerryE]

Sorry I skipped over the "I have had VirtualBox running the physical partition for a while now", as you spent the bulk of your OP talking about your failed attempts. OK, if this is true and you are booting from the Virtual H/W profile then you've sorted most of the driver issues. So what does your host and guest partition tables look like? Is the partition number the same? Have you tried safe mode? Have you tried booting with the debug option as I suggested to see where the boot stalls? What is your installed XP home drive when booting from the raw VMDK? What does disk manager see? If the partition number changes then sometime windows gets confused about assigning drive letters. If it's trying to boot from D: and your VDI partition is now C:, the boot will rapidly stall.

You are focusing on what you've done that's failed. If you have a raw VMDK + VM that boots and a VDI that gets into the NT bootstrap loader, then HDclone etc. is history. What we need is diagnostics on the specific failure that is occurring within the Windows NT startup process and the context info such as partition listings, boot.log extracts, etc. What you mean by the "Welcome screen" is unclear to me. Do you mean the 640x480 Windows Logo screen with the progress bar at the bottom (which is in fact displayed by NTLDR) or one of the status windows displayed after the graphics subsystem has been initialised, such as the Begin Logon Information window?

Have you run chkdsk on the VDI? (if you have the working raw VMDK VM, then you can temporarily attach the VDI to it as a second disk.)

[Zeikcied]

I don't know how to boot into Safe Mode or Debug when on the boot loader. All it gives me is Windows XP and Windows XP Recovery Console. I really have zero experience in debugging Windows, honestly. When I start the VM for the first time after copying it to the VDI, it automatically checks the new disk. So it does check for errors and all that stuff. I think I even tried going to the Recovery Console and manually checking the disk, and it didn't turn up any issues. I could try it again with the VDI as a slave to the VMDK drive.

Windows XP, when booted from the VMDK, is running off of C:. The Disk Manager sees C: (which is /dev/sda1 on Linux) plus two "Unknown" partitions (my ext4 /home partition at sda2 and a second ext4 partition at sda3).

It gets past the Windows Logo screen. Usually when WinXP boots, the way I have it set up, is after the progress screen, it gets to the Login stage, and auto-logs in and displays the Welcome screen. But when copied to the VDI, it gets past the progress screen, and the Guest Additions appear to load (as the resolution adjusts) but instead of bringing up the login screen or the Welcome screen (after the auto-login), it shows the Windows XP name and logo. So I suppose it is after the graphics subsystem, and right before the Login screen.

[TerryE]

Zeikcied, this is really like trying to find hens' teeth: Ask 4Qs, get 2 answers. Your not making these easy.
It's taken four replies to get the fact that the Windows partition is the first partition on both your bare HD and on your VDI, and to get a reasonable description of where you stall. We still don't know what version of VBox you are using.

I know that the change from raw VMDK to VDI is causing a different boot path ending in a stall, but this is well into the Windows boot sequence, so the MBR and partition bootstraps work OK. The filesystem is intact. You can boot into recovery console as see the C: drive. (I am assuming that this is the case from what you say).

Whilst it is worth comparing the vbox.log files for the VMDK and VDI boot, I suspect that there won't be any material differences.
XP sees both as the C: drive (you can double check this in recovery console). You now need to think in terms of debugging the XP startup and you need to enter XP safe mode to do this with boot logging enabled.

I've used bold for a couple of google search keys. Please don't ask me how to do things where the answer is on one of the first hits when you google the Q.

[vbox4me2]

Give the vmware-converter a try, after conversion use F8(savemode) to delete common devices, it should boot normal and find the VM hardware after that.

[TerryE]

@vbox4me2, you're going over the same dead ground that I did. The guy says that his raw VMDK VM boots fine, so the driver chain is compatible with a VBox VM profile. His issue is that when he moves the VMDK partition (1) to a VDI, the boot gets past NTLDR (and loading the H/W aware drivers) but then stalls in the boot sequence. I don't think VMware convertor will help with this one.

[Zeikcied]

Huh...This is weird.

The last time I tried this, I got frustrated and ended up deleting the VDI file and creating a new one (making sure to make it a fixed size VDI instead of dynamic), but I never copied the partition over. So it was essentially a blank VDI. So I copied the WinXP partition over today, and I boot it up, and it appears to be working just fine.

I don't know if it's because I upgraded to VirtualBox 3.0.0 (I doubt that) or if it was just some sort of odd anomaly the last time.

I actually feel quite foolish right now.

[TerryE]

Don't worry -- you're up and running. That's the main thing