virtualbox.org

I still have my Windows XP machine at the moment , but i would like to immortalise it as a virtual machine rather than always use a "bland" vanilla machine built from scratch.

Postings on the sysprobs website suggest this can be done using the VMWARE converter to convert my physical drive to VMDK virtual drive, then using QEMU Manager to convert this into a real file and then the Converter to create a VDI file.

I am aware that Virtualbox can handle VDH and VMDK file , but can it use these as a bootable O/S Disk or can that only be done by a VDI disk.

The postings i have read are 3/4 years old so i suppose my next questions is , is there a simpler/better way to do this now ?

I ask these questions now because i have managed to create my end product , but when i attempt to boot , i just get the standard grey screen and if i restart i get the usual choice of safe mode... and normal start. If i continue to select normal start i still have no success.

Any advice would be welcome.

Thx
RF

You can boot from VHD as well. The simplest way to create it I found is, in theory, Sysinternals' DISK2VHD. But for my selective multi-partition clone it created a somewhat botched VHD which needed manual fixing. So DISK2VHD doesn't seem that reliable.

Perhaps another option is to create and mount an empty VHD on the source machine, then use a partitioning software to copy partitions to it.

Mind you, Windows XP may refuse to boot initially due to driver issues. I haven't encountered this, but what I read suggests disk controller drivers and the HAL DLL are the usual problems.

Thank you for your advice emu1. I am glad to hear that VHD should boot , that will give me confidence to try again.
And if necessary i'll re-install VPC2007 to test as well if i have to.
I'll retest DISK2VHD and re-post my results.
THX

I have not seen anyone else report problems with Disk2VHD failing to image the disk correctly. That said, it's intended for Windows, and in fact it's intended for NTFS. If you had a dual boot with Linux and an EXTx format partition then I'm not sure what it would make of that.

In general you should always image the entire disk and only then, if necessary, eliminate any unwanted partitions from the VM.

Some stuff I read on the DISK2VHD forums sounds like similar problems.

My imaging scenario was 3 first partitions out of 4 (primary + 3 logicals): two FATs and one NTFS. I couldn't clone the whole thing because it was >137GB and I didn't want VHDX, and anyway didn't want the whole drive. The resultant VHD had wrong boot sectors for the last two copied partitions.

The limit on VHD size is 2TB, not 127GB. That said, I don't know what size limits Disk2VHD has, I don't remember anyone mentioning a problem. Do you have some kind of reference to Disk2VHD docs, did you get an error message, or were you just assuming you knew what the limit was?

It might actually refer to a VirtualPC limit rather than the VHD itself:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx wrote:Note: Virtual PC supports a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB. If you create a VHD from a larger disk it will not be accessible from a Virtual PC VM.

But anyway my image is less than 20GB (though the total disk size including the uncloned partition is 500GB). No error messages, it finished cleanly. I mostly fixed it by editing the boot sectors manually.

I'm pretty sure it is a VirtualPC limitation. I imaged a Windows 7 PC with DISK2VHD and the size was close to 400GB. I didn't try it in VPC because I don't use it but if done right it will work in VirtualBox with a small amount of tuning in the settings. After I had it preforming as it should ( booting several times in safe mode to replace drivers ) I converted it to VDI with CloneVDI Tool since I don't trust the VHD format. Why do you even need footers?

My Physical system is a recent rebuild with not a wiff of Linux , just an XP build taking around 5GB. I have the O/S and boot with Windows on my C partition and a D Drive just for data.

I ran DISK2VHD with no apparant poblems. I have ticked just Prepare for use in Virtual Pc and USe vhdx and Use volume shadow copy unticked. I had the first ticked in case i wanted to check the disk using VPC 2007.
In virtual box I did not change any of the default settings and during boot i had the bar progressing near the bottom and when that completed , nothing.....
So i ticked enable I/O APIC and that got me a stage further. Then i got the Windows startup screen with the knight rider bar but half way acros i got a blue screne very briefly then it went back to the start of the boot-up.

It took me several goes to get any details off the blue screen:
A problem has been detected and windows has bene shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, retsrat your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check for viruses on yoyr computer. remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and temrinated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then retsrat your computer.

My own thought is that i''m lacking somethign inconfiguration, But i had thought of installing VPC 2007 to see if it can boot up , any other ieas welcome.

THX

I would not have ticked "Prepare for use in Virtual PC" since VirtualBox is not VirtualPC.

A bluescreen at the first boot attempt is normal. It means that the VM recipe doesn't match the hardware that XP image expects to see. I can't say much more without the BSOD details.

Incidentally, Google for "P2V Disk2VHD mergeide site:forums.virtualbox.org", as all of this has been discussed many times before.

Thanks for the information and your advice mpack.

I tried to capture the entire BSOD but it's darn difficult at the best of times.
I ticked the "Prepare for use in Virtual PC" because i thought at some point i may have tested in VPC2007 to make sure the VHD is functional.
Ok so i'll re-run with this unticked

Thanks for the google tip, i'll read all of those over the easter break.
THX once mnore.( for the moment)