virtualbox.org

dear friends in Virtualbox. I am having trouble trying to look for a solution to import the existing windows 7 hard disk into virtual box. I was a previous subscriber of Parallel 6 but since the company charge exuberant upgrade price yearly, I have decided to opt for the free virtualbox.

I have been trying to look around google for a solution but it seems that the solution is very evasive. will really appreciate anyone who could give me advice to solve this pain in the backside!

exuberant means "very happy", I assume you meant exorbitant...

Does Parallels support export in OVA format? If yes then VBox can import it.

Otherwise, then the procedure I would follow is :-

1. Under Parallels, uninstall any Parallels supplied guest software for mouse integration, graphics and so on. These are not compatible with other VM platforms.
2. Download (inside the guest) and run "Disk2VHD", being sure to image the entire virtual disk - don't just image a partition. Write the VHD to a shared folder or USB drive.
3. (Optional, but highly recommended)Convert the VHD drive to VDI format using the VirtualBox command line tool, "VBoxManage clonehd <full vhd file name> <vdi file name> --format VDI". If you have access to a Windows PC (or if you have Wine on your Mac host) then you can also just clone the VDI using CloneVDI, which many people will find simpler to use.
4. Build a VirtualBox VM around the VDI (or VHD if you skipped the conversion step). Be sure to make the VM recipe as close as possible to that of the old VM, particularly with regard to IO APIC setting, disk controller type, and network MAC address. If it's a 64bit Win7 then you'll need to turn on the VT-x and PAE/NX settings.

I'm aware that VirtualBox has limited support for Parallel's v2 disk images. The above procedure ignores that, since I assume your VM doesn't use v2 disks.

hi, my bad.. haha, i do mean exorbitant! haha =p

anyway, i will try all these steps that you have recommended! thanks a lot!

Anyway, just an update, I manage to extract the hdd file from the parallel pvm. the "hdd" file is suppose to be recognized by virtual box but for some unknown reason, i got an error saying "failed to open the hard disk".
why doesn't virtualbox recognized the hdd format even it is supposed to be based on the drop down list.

See the final sentence of my previous answer.

I'm running Mac OS X 10.7. I also want to convert my Windows Vista in Parallels (Version 8.x) to Virtual Box. When I first uninstall Parallels tools, I am unable to save the converted image to a USB drive, or a shared drive. It seems that I need the Parallels Tools installed to be able to access other drives.

I tried using the VMware converter, but I'm sure that I would have the same result with Disk2VHD.

In another attempt, I imported to VMware Fusion from Parallels after uninstalling Parallels Tools. VMware Fusion was able to import and run Windows Vista. Then I tried to have Virtual Box import from VMware Fusion. Virtual Box could not run Windows.

Do you have any more suggestions? I'm ready to just install Windows, and then install my applications. I'm guessing that I could not even use Windows Easy Transfer to transfer programs and data files from OS X 10.7 running Parallels with Vista to OS X 10.7 running Virtual Box and Vista.

Is there a way to get Virtual Box to import a Vista image with app's from an HP laptop running Vista?

I don't use Parallels, but if it's like VirtualBox then simple shared folders requires the tools to be installed, but USB and NIC access is via virtual hardware, so no special software should be required.

If you have NIC access then you can set up a proper shared folder and write the VHD image to that. Also, I would not use VMWare converter, since your target platform is not VMWare and who knows what VMWare specifics will be installed. Disk2VHD is a disk imager, nothing more.