Trying to Virtualize Very Old Machine

[saberman]

I have a very old machine that I am trying to virtualize. It has Windows ME and Windows XP HE in a dual boot configuration. When the real machine is started a boot menu is shown with Windows XP HE as the default and Windows ME as a second choice.
The real machine's drive had the following layout:
Partition 1: C: with ME
Partition 2: Is an extended partition with three partitons in it:
Partition 2A: D: (data)
Partition 2B: E: with XP HE
Partition 2C: F: (data)

I created a complete drive image using OSFClone. OSFClone creates a forensic image of the drive at the hardware level. Every sector is copied and nothing is added to the image file.

I used VBoxManage to creaete a VDI:
VBoxManage convertfromraw <filename> <outputfile> --format VDI --variant Standard,Fixed
Using the VBox GUI I created a VM using Windows\ME (also tried Windows\XP) and attached the VDI. When I started the VM its screen turned black and an underscore character _ was in the top left position of the screen. Nothing happened after that no matter how long I waited.

If I use a Windows XP HE iso image to boot the VM it sees the Winodws XP HE system and I can log into it. Diskpart shows the four partitions. I tried running FixMBR and it warned that the MBR was none standard (or damaged) and that rewriting it might lose data. Since I had a copy of the VDI I let it write. Still could not boot. Booted off the iso again and ran FixBoot E:. Still could not boot the VM.

VBox.log

VM Log

(81.94 KiB) Downloaded 1 time

[MrWindows]

Try the free disk2vhd utility from Microsoft. I used it to virtualize a dying ThinkPad laptop and imported it into my Hyper-V environment no sweat. VirtualBox should be able to use the VHD format as well.

[mpack]

Disk2VHD is intimately tied to the volume snapshot ability of XP and later. Whether it will work on a disk whose main partition is WinME/FAT and which uses extended/logical partitions... I would have been wary to recommend any such thing without testing it.