Move a XP Physical machine into Virtual Box

[free780]

Recently trying VirtualBox OSE on Ubutnu. Usually use VB on XP as Host. I want to move my XP machine to a VM guest.
Should I:
1) Disk Image all Drives on XP machine (as a backup)
2) sysprep the xp physical machine
3) image the whole physical xp machine computer
4) Create a new VM with same size Hard disks
5) Restore Disk Images with C drive first into VM

Would this work ?
Anybody done this successfully?

[stefan.becker]

Use the search function. There are several threads about this topic with different approaches.

[BasilRathbone]

I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 as my host and VB 3.1.2 on an old Dell with only 512mb RAM, 225mb allocated to Windows.

I cloned my existing Windows XP drive with Paragon Partition Manager and used the "Raw"* feature to point VB to my cloned drive. Make sure the vmdk goes in the right directory! Much to my surprise, XP fired right up. It whined mightily about needing to be reactivated** but that went smoothly too.

I had originally hoped to have the choice of booting Windows by itself or running it under Ubuntu via VB but the activation issue leads me to want to leave it one way and not try to switch back and forth*** ... but I could if I wanted to put up with the reactivation hassle.

The only fly in the ointment was that XP would sometimes take --forever-- to do some tasks. I think I've tracked the problem down to disk access issues and I've read the NTFS-3G drivers VB uses can sometimes go into --forever-- mode so I'm in the process of converting my NTFS partition into FAT32 to see if that helps any but haven't quite gotten there yet.

I'd sure like to hear from others about this possible NTFS-3G issue(s) and/or hear other insights into this. Could the sloooooow access be the "RAW" vmdk feature?

Don

* VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /path/to/file.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sdx
** Windows sees the VM environment as a different machine than it came from and wants to reactivate.
*** I don't want to spend that much time talking to Redmond over a BS activation issue.