Existing Windows XP hard drive

[BobK]

My XP system died, I bought a new PC that has Windows 7 64bit Home edition. The XP system disk appears to be usable via either dual boot, or by replacing the W7 HD with the old HD. XP boots to the point where it wants me to confirm that I do want to allow drivers for the "new hardware" it found to be installed. BUT --- that new hardware is the new Windows 7 PC with USB keyboard/mouse. The old box had PS/2 keyboard/mouse and XP won't recognize either device. Catch 22, I can't tell it go ahead and install the 'new hardware'!

I searched these forums, but find nothing matching the subject I used or other posts similar to what I'm asking..

I downloaded and installed Virtualbox on this Windows 7 64 drive and would like to run the existing XP hard drive as the 'virutual' XP system in order to run the hardware that have no drivers acceptable to the Window 7 system as well as apps on that drive. BUT, I can't seem to find anything in VirtualBox that accepts an existing Hard drive already loaded with a full Windows XP system!

Why can't I run off the existing XP hard drive? What am I missing? It won't do me any good to create a new virtual XP system as it won't have all the APPs & drivers that are no longer installable (lost most installation CDs -- don't ask). I've already found that W7 can't run them off the XP HD as the W7 registry isn't setup for those apps.

I can't get at the Windows XP recovery files as that partition has a clobbered boot sector. I do have recovery discs on order and coming to try and
turn it into a dual bootable drive, just thought virtualbox would run it as I've see that done with other virtual software.

If - I do get the XP running under Virtualbox, will the virtualized keyboard and mouse appear to be acceptable to the XP system? (well, I guess I'll find out)

I really need to keep a couple of those old Apps going for a while, as well as using the Scanner (which has no acceptable, to W7, driver) as well as my camera.

Thanks,
Bob K.

[dmcgraw]

Why did you post this twice, only 4 minutes apart? Cross posting is very annoying and causes people not to want to help you.

[Perryg]

Other post deleted.