Moving Vista installation from physical PC to Vitual PC
Hello all,
*(see a few posts down for exact text from the book)
In the MCITP Vista Client for Enterprise Technicians book by Tony Northrup and JC Mackin there's a side note that describes how using ImageX to capture a user's "old" workstation then applying that image to a Virtual PC (on a new workstation) would make migration to Vista easier. The logic beind this is that it would allow users to go back and reference their old workstations in case something didn't work. I thought this was one of the greatest ideas I've seen so I tried it myself.
I captured my Vista Enterprise (x86) installation from my office workstation using ImageX then created a new Virtual PC on a different workstation. I booted into our WinPE environment with our WDS server and used DiskPart to create the primary partition, assign a drive letter, mark as active etc. I formatted it then used ImageX to apply the captured image from my "old" workstation.
When the PC rebooted it stopped during the boot manager process and gave me the cannot find the "winload.exe" program. I looked around on the internet and figured out how to repair this using BCDEdit and set the correct paths. I rebooted again and got the Vista boot loader to actually run, but Vista still wouldn't boot. The problem was now loading cdrcdisk.sys which of course halted the boot process. I figure this has to do with the fact that the original workstation was installed on a SATA interface (which did not require a custom driver -Dimension 4700) and the VM disk is an ATA interface. Others on the internet suggested siabling USB devices but of course those options aren't available in a VM BIOS.
Was JC Mackin just assuming this would work? Will Virtual PC allow a emulated SATA mode in future versions? Others using VMWare were able to edit the virtual hard disk directly and change the disk interface, but this isn't possible with Virtual PC. Does this only work with XP installations? Remember, I tried to capture a Vista installation.
Thank you all,
All Replies
- I really don't want to buy a book to know this side note....
So what this side note says?
Only use imagex or use sysprep AND imagex? Sorry, I've made a mistake.
The "Real World" side note is actually from the MCITP Vista Client for Enterprise Technicians (70-622) book by Tony Northrup and JC Mackin.
Here's the text-
------
Real World
JC Mackin
"Before upgrading user's computers to a new operating system, I typically spend some time with them locating their essential files so that I can back up these files before the upgrade. However, users do occasionally forget about important files stored in well-hidden locations, especially when they are used to accessing this data automatically through an application. So, to keep users happy after the upgrade, ideally, you should ensure that they have a way of accessing everything on their old old systems. You can certainly achieve this if you just backup their entire system in advance of the upgrade, and sometimes this is indeed the best solution. But what I prefer to do when I can is to back up only their user state and then replace the system's hard disk, moving the old one to an external enclosure that can be access directly if necessary.
Now however, there's an even cooler way to let users have access to their old data. Microsoft's ImageX utility allows you to capture an image of the user's old system and then deploy that image anywhere-even inside a virtual machine. Users can then run the virtual machine in Virtual PC when they need to access something that wasn't backup up or even when-why not?-they're just feeling a little nostalgic for their old desktop."
Hi,
I am not sure if we can migrate the image from a physical machine to Microsoft Virtual PC. If you are using Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008, you can use the built-in P2V feature in System Center Virtual Machine Manager to convert physical servers to virtual machines.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/virtualmachinemanager/en/us/default.aspx
You can also use VSMT (Virtual Server Migration Toolkit) to migrate a physical Windows NT 4.0/2000/2003 system to Virtual Server 2005.
VSMT
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/overview/vsmtwhitepaper.mspx
If you would like to migrate a physical machine to Virtual PC, I suggest discussing this issue in our Virtual PC newsgroup.
Virtual PC newsgroup
Hope it helps.
Tim Quan - MSFT
- Of course you can!
Tim Quan - MSFT wrote: Hi,
I am not sure if we can migrate the image from a physical machine to Microsoft Virtual PC. I
But the main diff with SCVMM/HV and VSMT/VS is that you don't have a wizard to automaticaly do it.
You need to do each step manually
Migrating from physical to virtual is the same than physical to physical (sysprep and Cloning). And its easier with Vista (you don't have the HAL compatibility problem) Thank you both --
Kazer,
You said that this is possible with sysprep. Isn't it not a good idea to sysprep an already functional user workstation? What I mean is that these PCs are on a medium sized domain, have virus scanners, etc..
(update) - I just got an XP image to work, but I had to make two changes. I had to edit boot.ini because the partition was on (2). THEN - boot to an XP CD and run a repair installation because XP would stop booting after mup.sys.
Is JC Mackin's recommendation just totally incorrect?
Kazer wrote: Of course you can!Tim Quan - MSFT wrote: Hi,
I am not sure if we can migrate the image from a physical machine to Microsoft Virtual PC. I
But the main diff with SCVMM/HV and VSMT/VS is that you don't have a wizard to automaticaly do it.
You need to do each step manually
Migrating from physical to virtual is the same than physical to physical (sysprep and Cloning). And its easier with Vista (you don't have the HAL compatibility problem)
