Guide: How to migrate active Windows XP to VirtualBox

[mystix]

hi @droopy,

i followed your instructions and managed to get Windows XP (SP3) from a Dell box to boot successfully in Virtualbox.
i am, however, experiencing an infinite login/logout scenario.
that, plus the virtual copy of WinXP keeps nagging me to (re)activate.

i've tried the suggestions from http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/Tips.htm (see Trap 3), but they proved to be unsuccessful.
i was wondering how you managed to get yours working without encountering both the infinite login/logout loop, and the activation nag?

[droopy]

Hi mystix,

The login/logout scenario is a problem with wrong Drive letter attachet to your system drive. You probably had both (original and virtual) disks seen by your windows system before move, so your system looks for drive C, but only find drive D.

You have to delete drive entries from registry in your virtual windows copy. Here is short guide:

1. Boot to your clean installation of Windows XP (same as used in my guide) with attached disk of your WXP.
2. run "regedit" (Win+r type regedit)
3. Highlight the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE entry and select it
4. In the menu select "Registry" -> "Load Hive"
5. Select the wanted registry database file from your attached WXP:
   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM] (D:\windows\system32\config\system)
6. Use name like "my-wxp"
7. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\my-wxp\MountedDevices
8. Delete the entries for all disks (should be enough to delete entries named \DosDevices\...)
9. In the menu select "Registry" -> "Unload Hive" and close regedit. Shutdown the machine.
10. Try to boot with your virtual machine and your backed up WXP as bootdisk. The login should work now.

I didn't have problem with activation, so can't help there.

[avmad]

...the virtual copy of WinXP keeps nagging me to (re)activate...

Hi mystix, droopy et al,

If I was to follow the process in this thread of cloning my running XP host into a VB guest, presumably there is a licensing issue? Wouldn't both OS instances have the same product code?

Along the above lines (and assuming that my assertion about licensing is accurate), perhaps getting the activation nag is a good thing as (if I remember the process correctly), doesn't activation present the opportunity to enter a new product code there? If so, you could enter the code of another copy of XP and keep it legal???

[Etepetete]

i was wondering how you managed to get yours working without encountering both the infinite login/logout loop, and the activation nag?

The answer to your question is located here. Although I do not know if it will work for you now that you have already started using your VDI. (DmiBIOSSettings as a hint.)

Regarding the comments about the "long way" of doing this. I have posted my experiences in the German forum here. The reason why I did it this way, is because that is the results of researching this forum, the manual and the Internet (for Linux dd command) and last but not least, trial and error. It might have taken a little longer, but I had no problems with BSODs, activation or similar. (I did make one mistake along the way, but after getting all the steps right I can testify that it is fail safe.) One may be able to reduce a step or two thanks to mpack's great CloneVDI tool, but the order of steps have to be followed exactly. In the future, I will always do it the way I described it there (with a little help from CloneVDI tool to shorten the process).

[Etepetete]

Do you mean that you are converting an XP installation to a VM, to run inside the original XP installation?

If so, aren't you going to run into issues with identical SIDs?

For whoever is interested, SIDs are a myth.

I found it to be interesting reading.

[NeBlackCat]

Do you mean that you are converting an XP installation to a VM, to run inside the original XP installation?

If so, aren't you going to run into issues with identical SIDs?

For whoever is interested, SIDs are a myth.

I found it to be interesting reading.

Wow - thanks for that!

[derBaumbär]

Is therre any easier way than this? The VMWare converter fails for me since there are some errors with VSS but i want to migrate my XP to VBox though...

[Briggsey]

Is therre any easier way than this? The VMWare converter fails for me since there are some errors with VSS but i want to migrate my XP to VBox though...

I would think you should use a tool that can backup and recover the OS to different hardware or virtual platforms. I used a piece of software called CBMR from Cristie (www.cristie.com). This is able to backup a physical machine and restore in to a virtual platform, or vice versa, or even physical to physical, virtual to physical and so on. Google for "Cristie CBMR" and see if this looks like it would help you.