virtualbox.org

I currently have Windows 7 running in a Parallels 6 VM on a MacBook with OS X Lion. I'm setting up a new Mac running Mountain Lion, which would require upgrading to Parallels 7, and thought I'd investigate VirtualBox instead.

As stated in the title, I'm wanting to import my existing VM into VirtualBox on the new computer. Searching around here, I didn't see a clear discussion of how to do this. The closest thing I've found is at ehow (can't post the link my first day of being a member, apparently), although the lack of a date or any version numbers on that article concerns me a bit. Should I just try this procedure, is there something better I should try instead, or am I just SOL?

If you clone the source VM then you can't do any damage - though of course you should postpone reactivation until you're sure you've finished tweaking the VM recipe.

Basically you should create a stand-alone clone of the source VM using whatever tools Parallels provides for that purpose. Run the clone and uninstall all integration drivers from inside the VM, these of course are Parallels specific and can only cause problems elsewhere. After that the problem becomes how to copy the VM to a form which VirtualBox can use.

If possible you need to convert the hard disk format into Parallels 2, VMDK, VHD or VDI format. After that you create a VM in VirtualBox to match the parallels VM recipe as close as possible, then mount the virtual hd to replace the stub created by the VBox "new VM" wizard.

I'm not familiar with Parallels: if it has a direct OVF/OVA export facility then you can export the clone using that, and import it with VBox.

Thanks for the info on this. I can't find any conversion tools inside Parallels, though it's definitely possible I'm missing something. The process recommended by the eHow article (that I think I'll be able to post a link to this afternoon, if I understand the site rules correctly) is to install the VMWare Converter in the VM, use that to make a VMDK of the VM, then set up a new VM in VirtualBox using the newly-created VMDK as the drive.

I was able to follow this process and get the new virtual drive up and running in VirtualBox, but Windows won't boot in the new VM, and says it's unable to automatically repair the installation. I'd rather not need to reinstall Windows, but I guess I can do that if I need to. I guess that's to be expected in trying to move a Windows installation to new hardware (even with matching the VM settings as closely as possible).

The VMWare Converter idea should work, though I would prefer to use Disk2VHD since I don't know what VMWare assumptions a VMWare tool would have. You would write the resulting disk image to a shared folder or a USB disk drive - in either case make sure the target drive can handle files larger than 4GB (e.g. FAT/FAT32 formatted USB drives can't).

VMWare Converter was able to "chunk" the virtual disk file into ~2 GB files, so that wasn't an issue. Disk2VHD looks like it would accomplish the same thing, and it's about 99% smaller--I'll have to keep that in mind in the future.

Now to see if I can get Windows to boot without reinstalling...