VERY good luck with migrated guest VM's

[Rootman]

I recently switched back to Virtualbox from the "other" Virtual Machine softWARE player for Windows guests. I was sick of the poor performance, it was bad and getting worse with each version "upgrade" . Last month I downloaded and installed Virtualbox, rebuilt my "play" Windows XP box and was delighted by the dramatic increase in performance. I had 6 other Windows VM's I used on 2 different machines, I was NOT looking forward to rebuilding them all - and it ends up I didn't have to. I poked around and found some historical posts about how to switch from the "other" product to VB and was frustrated on the steps to take. All of them involved converting disks and adjusting the VMs registry I decided to dive in on a slow Friday afternoon and give it a try using some hints I found for converting a PHYSICAL machine to a VM, and I am VERY pleased with the results. I thought I'd pass on some hints in case anyone else is doing the same.

FIRST:
+ BACK UP YOUR PRESENT VM's, this can be done by simply copying the guests folder to another disk or subfolder while they are shut down
+ Fire up the VM in the VMWplayer software and take note of the processor count, memory and NICs
+ Go to the GUESTS 'ADD REMOVE PROGRAMS' in XP or 'PROGRAMS AND FEATURES' in Win 7 - uninstall the VMWARE tools. Windows starts finding new hardware as the VMWtools are removed, tell it to IGNORE the new hardware for now, keep clicking CANCEL. When done say NO to a reboot and shut the machine DOWN
+ You DID back the VM up like I said didn't you? This is an easy way back in case the next steps screw it up beyond use. If it screws up simply copy the good copy of the files over the messed up ones.
+ Create a new VM in VB, use the same processor count and memory and set up the NICs the same too, tell it to NOT create a disk and accept the warning that there is no disk when finishing the VM.
+ Go back into this "new" VM and adjust the following settings.
+ SETTINGS -> SYSTEM -> MOTHERBOARD check ENABLE IO APIC to ON
+ SETTINGS -> SYSTEM -> PROCESSOR check ENABLE PAE/NX to ON
+ VMPlayer and VB use 2 different subdirectories so the .VMDK disk from the "old" VM won't be in the "new" VM's folder, I would advise MOVING the .VMDK file that represents the VMWPlayer VM to the VB folder that holds the newly created VM, you do NOT have to convert the VM from the VMWPlayer disk format to the VB disk format, it works just fine as a .VMDK.
+ Once the .VMDK disk file is moved open up the newly created VM in the VB main interface and add the disk to it in VB go to SETTINGS -> STORAGE -> Click the little green PLUS sign below the STORAGE TREE dialog area and select ADD HARD DISK then CHOOSE EXISTING DISK, navigate to the .VMDK disk and select it. Click OK and try firing up the new VM.
+ If the mouse and keyboard do not respond simply let the running VM set for a few minutes, Windows is finding hardware in the background and it will soon respond..
+ Once the VM is up log on and ignore any NEW HARDWARE prompts and add the Virtualbox guest additions to the VM , THEN reboot. Install the additions by clicking DEVICES off the Virtualbox VM's menu and select INSTALL GUEST ADDITIONS.
+ Because this is essentially a "new" PC Windows might bitch about having to be reactivated. Depending on how many times you've activated it and the license type you may have to call MS and recite an incredibly long line of numbers / letters that the activation wizard prompts. Whatever you do say ONE to the number of activations when asked, saying anything else will not allow you to activate that license again.

With any luck the VM will now boot up and run just fine. I had 6 VM's that I moved over this way and 5 of them came over fine and show a remarkable increase in performance over the other VMWplayer. The 6th was running pretty crappy in the VMWplayer and I suspected the OS was hosed, after 2 hours of trying to uninstall the vmware tools I gave up and deleted the entire VM. It was a COPY of a VM that I had on another host and already moved it there without issue so I simply copied the VMDK to the other host and reused it by renaming the HOST name in Windows to avoid network conflicts.

The difference in performance for me was amazing, they went from jittery jumpy VMs to usable near pure hardware speed VMs. These are the SAME freakin' VMs using the SAME disk files so they are comparing apples to apples. I knew my first VB VM that rebuilt was working well but was unsure how much of it was due to being a "fresh" OS and not carrying over all the crap it had accumulated over the years. These migrated VMs show the SAME performance increase so it just goes to show how much better VB is than VMWPlayer.

[mpack]

Thanks for this post, I'm sure others will find it useful.

I would only add one caveat: if the VMWare VM uses snapshots then you can't just copy the base VMDK, and moving the snapshots as-is to VirtualBox is not really practical. There are a number of solutions to this problem, the easiest of which is to follow your preparation advice up the the VMDK copy stage, and then export the VMWare VM as an appliance instead, which can then be imported directly into VirtualBox without requiring the VM creation step. Exporting as an appliance causes the snapshots to be merged.

[Rootman]

Thanks for the snapshot advice, I frankly never use them so I didn't know about the incompatibility.

I've used the appliance export before in ESX but frankly didn't know it even existed in VMWPlayer, should the opportunity again present itself I'll give it a try, I've migrated all my machines to VB and uninstalled VMWPlayer so it won't be any time soon I'm afraid, I didn't see any reason to keep it around any longer as VB's performance was so much better.

Thanks again.

[jpdamigaman]

worked great Rootman

Thanks

[ramack]

Worked flawlessly! Thanks Rootman!!!

[cparias]

Rootman,
Could you please clarify if the win XP you originally migrated back in Nov 2012 were XP SP2 or XP SP3.
I made a post in Feb 2016 looking ofr successful experiences migrating from VMWare guest XP SP3 to VBox..
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=76294
My main issue is the apparent freeze where the mouse and keyboard do not seem to respond in VBox.. for up to 10-12 hours.
Thanks

[mpack]

The procedure would be the same for both. I'm not aware of anything in the service pack that would affect any of the steps. And yes, I have P2V-migrated SP3 XP installations without difficulty.