virtualbox.org

I once had a windows XP-PC. In the meantime I have thrown away it, but kept my HD. So now, I only have the winXP-HD.

And in addition, I have a new PC with Linux and Win10 as dual boot.
In Linux I also have a VM of Win7.


What I want to do:
I would like to make a VM of my old WinXP HD.


I already have tried to do this with Disk2VHD:
Variant 1)
I can not make a working VHD of my WinXP-HD in Win10. This way I can not get a proper working VM. Disk2VHD only works with Win7. So I can not do this.

Variant 2)
I have started my win7 VM in my Linux host. In this win7 VM, I have started Disk2VHD. Although I have embedded the partition of my old winXP-HD into the Win7-VM, the WinXP-HD was not available to select, after starting Disk2VHD. So I was also not available to make my VHD this way.

Is there nevertheless somehow any possibility to make a VM of my old WinXP-HD?

Thank you.

Google for "XP p2v site:forums.virtualbox.org".

Disk2VHD works fine in Win10. Imaging an XP disk will work fine too, provided of course that you have the disk in a caddy mounted in Windows 10. Alternatively, try Macrium Reflect Free, though this will be much less convenient: it isn't a direct-to-virtual imaging tool.

Thank you.
What do you exactly mean with quote: "provided of course that you have the disk in a caddy mounted"

Plagrö wrote:What do you exactly mean with quote: "provided of course that you have the disk in a caddy mounted"

Quite obviously, Disk2VHD running under Windows 10 can only image the drives that Windows 10 sees. You provided no data to verify that this was the case, all you said was "Disk2VHD only works with Win7", which is definitely false: no idea where you got that from.

Thank you.

I have created an image with Macrium Reflect Free.
And I have created a rescue boot USB stick with Macrium Reflect Free.
And I have created a new VM without HD.

Is there a way, to boot this VM from my USB stick? So that I can retrieve my WinXP backup?
In the system Tab of VirtualBox I only found "boot-order-> disk; optical; HD; Network, but not USB-Stick.
(?)

Plagrö wrote: Is there a way, to boot this VM from my USB stick?

Practically speaking, no. VirtualBox provides virtual USB hardware yes, but the virtual BIOS does not support booting from USB: the USB devices only become available after a guest OS has booted up and loaded the appropriate drivers.

You have to create the recovery disk as an recovery CD ISO, not a USB stick. Then you mount the ISO in the VM in the virtual CD drive.

And again: I do wonder why you went for this more difficult, circuitous route when I already said that Disk2VHD works fine.

Thank you.

It is said here:
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows

That we must first run "the MergeIDE utility" before making a VM of Win XP with Disk2VHD. To do that, we need the old HD together with the old PC. But I have only the old HD, but a new PC with win 10 and Linux.

Question 1: Do I also need to use "the MergeIDE utility, when I choose the "Macrium Reflect Free" method?

Question 2: I can not run "the MergeIDE utility", because I can not start the original WinXP system on my old HD, because I do not have my old computer.
(I know, that "the MergeIDE utility" is only a *.reg. But I have red, that this would not work: Open the reg-file from winXP-HD. Apply the *,reg-file from "the MergeIDE utility". I read, that this would not work.)

Plagrö wrote: Question 1: Do I also need to use "the MergeIDE utility, when I choose the "Macrium Reflect Free" method?

Yes. The method of getting the disk image from A to B doesn't affect how much the guest OS at B likes what's on the disk.

Plagrö wrote: Question 2: I can not run "the MergeIDE utility", because I can not start the original WinXP system on my old HD

Once you have the disk as a VDI you can attach it to another working Windows (XP ideally) VM, then run regedit, use File|Load Hive to open the remote registry files and apply the changes manually.

This is actually the wrong forum and wrong website for a discussion about Windows technical matters. XP has this same problem when migrated as an image P2P, it is not specifically a VM problem, and certainly not a "Linux Hosts" problem. I'm willing to keep answering questions for now, but do bear in mind that there's a limit to how much XP support I'm willing to undertake, so doing some of your own research would be useful.

Thank you. I am a step further now.

But with "load hive" I only can make a hook for "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\". (F:\WINDOWS\system32\config\system)
So the hook stands for "system" and not for "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE".

But the content of "MergeIDE.reg" is something like: I have tried this out, but got not the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CriticalDeviceDatabase\primary_ide_channel] into my hook.

So I guess, this is, because my hook is "System", but while importing, it was looking for something like "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" but did not found it in my hook, and so was not able to import anything.
(?)