Convert a VMWare XP VM?

[MartinWill27]

I'm a total newbie to VirtualBox. I'm running it on a Sony laptop that is running Ubuntu 12.04LTS, and it included the VirtualBox package. On a different machine, a Macook 5, I have a VMWare Fusion virtual machine running Windows XP that has crashed, since I updated its hard drive to 500GB - the old 160GB drive is now in a USB enclosure and had the same VM on it, but with less space allocated. It was working at the time of the HDD upgrade. The files on the HDD include both a disk image and a load of vmdk files. The configuration was a C drive with a working Windows XP SP3 intallation, and a D drive with data, each configured to 30GB capacity (but the total disk usage was around 120GB of the limited 160GB Macbook drive.) From the information I've found so far it looks like one can import this VM into VirtualBox. Can I do this by
(a) just importing the disk image
(b) just importing the VMDK files
(c) both
from the USB drive with the original Macbook drive? Or from a backup of this drive that I made using the Macbook and an external GoFlex 2TB drive?
The backup could not be done via the Linux computer, as it involved permissions that only the Macbook could authenticate. (i.e the Macbook asked for an administrator password to make the backups of a lot of the files including the Fusion virtual machine files.) When I tried backing up the Macbook drive via the Linux computer I was not given a window to enter the admin username and password for the Macbook that would have unlocked the files.
Part 2: If I successfully backup this and can open it with VirtualBox do I need to use the same username/password to run it?
Part 3: The new Macbook drive VM worked for a while, and I have a lot of more recent data on its D drive that I want to recover to the new VM on Ubuntu. However, the Macbook no longer will open that VM. I've tried in vain to find out how to unpack the vmdk files so that I can recover the data but VMWare forums don't help. I haven't seen much on your forums to help either. Please tell me where I can find answers or post the specific questions above to get answers because I need that data back. Basically everything since September last year when the drive was upgraded has been lost because Fusion can no longer run the VM. As the files have the same names and same admin/password as the originals I think if I tried to restore the original virtual C drive to the Macbook or the original working VM, it would overwrite the newer verson of the machine and its newer data destroying all possibility of getting it back. Please direct me to where I can get help with this issue! Your search engine doesn't seem to function well enough to home in on the right forum for this question.

[Perryg]

You can search the site with any search engine using your keyword/s followed with site:forums.virtualbox.org

However we do not support VMWare at any level, but I believe you need to use their converter to be able to import it to VirtualBox. Since it can not read the image in VMWare I have no idea how what you need to do.

[MartinWill27]

While I'm not expecting VMWare support, your site does indicate that a VM can be loaded with .vmdk files which were created using that product. What I'm asking for is how to create a VM on Ubuntu from the .vmdk files, or whether I should create it from the disk image, or whether I should build a new VM from the original Windows XP hard drive - the last option would not include the data files I'm trying to recover, but they are in a series of .vmdk files, so if your program can read .vmdk files it might be able to recover the data using the working OS from the XP drive, which is not attached to any computer that can run the Windows XP on it. But I need to know how to do this. VMWare had a converter that was loaded onto the Windows machine and created the .vmdk files from each drive. Is there something else I should use to convert the Windows drive? If so what, and where do I find it? As I said I'm a complete newbie to this, please don't obfuscate the issue by telling me to search the forums with keywords, but instead direct me to the appropriate forum for this type of question. I previously had tried searching by keyword but couldn't find anything that helped me.

[FrodoHobbits]

You could always try and create a new Vbox XP guest and when you get to the Virtual Hard Disk section select "Use existing had disk" and point to your .vmdk file.
Once the guest is created you will probably have to play around with the settings, like Enable IO APIC or Enable PAE/NX.
If you have VMTools installed then the thing might not ever run unless you can uninstall them.
I have successfully done this on several occasions using various OS's