Virtualizing an Existing XP (on SATA Partition) Machine

[MontyMan]

Attempting to virtualize by these steps:
Source computer: 32-Bit XP Professional installed on C: which is a partition of a SATA drive (The computer also contains E: which is a partition of an IDE drive and F: which is a small recovery partition on the IDE drive)

• Disk2vhd with "prepare for use in Virtual PC" unchecked and the Shadow Copy option checked for C: only; results in MWDESKTOP.VHDX file on a removable USB stick
• plug the stick in to my Toshiba running Linux Mint 19, with VirtualBox installed
• clonemedium to transform the VHDX into a vdi file
• create a virtual machine of type 32 bit XP, connecting the "existing" virtual disk vdi file

When I fire it up, it prompts me to click F12 to choose a boot medium. But nothing I do at this point gets me beyond either a black screen or a "disk read" error. I read this article (.../viewtopic.php?f=28&t=42829) but it appears to apply to a "from scratch" install, rather than a virtualization. But I'm sure part of the issue is that my VHDX is from a partition, not a physical drive.

Any ideas?

[BillG]

I doubt that your problem is that you only converted the system partition. That is all you need to boot Windows XP. My Windows XP vm only has one partition. You problem is that the .vdi is not bootable.

The physical drive being SATA could be a problem. I don't really know. I have only ever used IDE for XP.

I would have selected the option in Disk2VHD to create a .vhd file, not .vhdx . You do not need to convert it to .vdi to test it. You can boot from a .vhd .

[mpack]

Do you still have access to the original XP PC? If so I would run through the process again, but this time run MergeIDE before imaging the drive. The need for this is discussed here, but you can ignore the antiquated imaging options suggested in that article.

Otherwise I have no problem with anything you did: Disk2VHD is designed as a disk conversion tool, so I'm pretty sure that selecting the C:\ partition gives you an image of the whole drive, so that should be OK - especially if it didn't offer any other way of specifying the drive. The main problem will be that VirtualBox almost certainly doesn't support your physical SATA controller, so having run MergeIDE it should now be possible to change the VM settings to attach the VDI drive to an IDE controller. This can be converted later to a VirtualBox SATA controller if this matters to you.

I have to disagree with Bill on one thing. While you can use VHD in VirtualBox, it is definitely not recommended. You already have a process that results in a VDI, so I'd stick with that process.

Finally, if you have doubts that your VDI contains a valid partition map (i.e. the result of imaging a partition instead of a drive), then you can view the VDI using CloneVDI. It can show you the partition map on the virtual drive.

[MontyMan]

Thanks @BillG and @mpack! It will be some time before I get it out again, but I will try these things.

Best,
..Monty.