virtualbox.org

Hello All,

This is my first time posting to a forum, so I hope I put all the information that is needed. I just recently purchased a MAC, until this point I have always used a PC. On the PC side, I have a VM created from my work, this VM has to be built on the company domain but we can utilize it on other platforms. When I built this VM at work it was done using VMPlayer (latest version). Since I didn't want to purchase VMFusion for the MAC, I installed VirtualBox and tried to utilize the VM directly, which failed by giving me an error stating that some hardware change was done.

After researching the web for a while, I was able to figure out that I need to go to the Windows Machine and from the command line export it out so VB could load it. Afterwards, I added the files to the MAC and tried to do an import, when doing the import I get a hard drive error.

I have tried to search for it and unable to find the solution for this. Any advise or direction on how to resolve this would be great.

Thank You all in Advance,

ParE

I would forget the export/import idea. I think you did it right the first time, copying the VMDK and building a new VM around it. You do however need to uninstall the VMWare tools from inside the guest - you would have to do that whether you copy the VMDK or export.

Yes, hardware changes are to be expected, but a modern guest should be able to cope with that. Be more specific about the error message and we might be able to say more. You don't mention what version of Windows you are using. Note that you may run into activation problems if you try to run XP or later on multiple hosts, particularly if the CPUs differ.

The basic procedure for transferring a VMWare XP VM is :-

• Inside the VMWare VM, uninstall the VMWare tools.
• Still inside the VMWare VM, run MergeIDE (this adds info to the registry making XP more tolerant of IDE controller changes).
• Close VM, transfer the VMDK to the target PC.
• In VirtualBox, create a new VM around the existing VMDK. Carefully match the VM recipe to the VMWare original. IO APIC should be asserted, the disk controller type should be changed to IDE. Try to preserve the MAC address of the virtual NIC.

The VM that is built at work is Windows 7 64 bit. When I try to run it on the MAC - it give the error that "Windows detect a hardware change". Please keep in mind that this was built on a Windows 7 64bit platform with many multiple vmdk files. Please let me know exactly what other information is needed and I will provide it.

I would prefer to rebuild on the MAC but can't since MAC are not allowed on the network where I work.

I had a friend with a MAC and VMFusion and it works flawless on it, so I know the VM works on a MAC.

Again Thanx for the support.

ParE

Yes, Windows 7 will detect lots of hardware changes, that is simply a fact. The method of importing the VM will make no difference to that: none of the methods change what's on the virtual hard disk, that belongs to the guest OS. It isn't really an error either: it should adapt to the new hardware though it may need to be reactivated.

If you aren't getting the message through then provide screenshots and VM logs to clarify (the latter as .zip attachments please).