Apologies if I missed a FAQ or Tutorial. I can't believe that I'd be the first person asking about this but since I searched and poked around the forums, I didn't see a similar question on moving/migrating
Got a new computer. Retiring my XP notebook.(32-bit Professional)
Old Computer: Virtual Box 4.2.2 r81494
New Computer: Virtual Box not yet installed. It's Win 7 Professional, 64 bit
I have a bunch of VM guests I'd like to move over to my new machine. Any advice? The main thing is that I've got guests with a bunch of snapshots which are useful to me for various reasons.
Kindly,
Jim
Migrating from Win XP to Win 7
Re: Migrating from Win XP to Win 7
AFAIK it should be as simple as copying the VM folders completely over to the new host. Since the processor is not virtualized then Windows guests will likely have to be reactivated as it will see a new processor. I've done this a few times on a Windows guest that I purchased a version of Windows 7 for, I moved it from host to host and them from another VM player to Virtualbox which changed enough about the guest and required it to be reactivated.
If it's been activated more than like twice it may require that you phone MS and give them an incredibly long string of characters to which they will give you a key to type in. When asked be sure to tell them that you installed this version on ONE computer as saying anything else will VOID the Windows license and I believe that you will not be able to activate it again.
If it's been activated more than like twice it may require that you phone MS and give them an incredibly long string of characters to which they will give you a key to type in. When asked be sure to tell them that you installed this version on ONE computer as saying anything else will VOID the Windows license and I believe that you will not be able to activate it again.
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mpack
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Re: Migrating from Win XP to Win 7
As Rootman says: after installing the latest VirtualBox on your new PC, copy the contents of your old "VirtualBox VMs" folder to the new PC, then use Machine|Add... to register each VMs .vbox file on the new host.
This advice assumes that all of your old VMs are in v4 format (i.e. that they have a .vbox file). If you still have some old format VMs (using <vmname>.xml as control file) then clone them and move the clone instead - the clone will be in v4 format. v3 format VMs are not easily portable, especially if they use snapshots.
This advice assumes that all of your old VMs are in v4 format (i.e. that they have a .vbox file). If you still have some old format VMs (using <vmname>.xml as control file) then clone them and move the clone instead - the clone will be in v4 format. v3 format VMs are not easily portable, especially if they use snapshots.