Disk2VHD image will not open

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I have an old P-III that I would like to image and run as a virtual machine on my Windows 7 Pro 64-bit computer, so that I can toss the old box. The P-III is an old Dell Dimension running XP Pro SP2 (32-bit). The Win7 computer has RAID 1; the old one has no RAID.

I created a .vhd image using Disk2VHD, then created a new vm on the Win7 computer pointing to that .vhd file. It will not run. It gets to the XP splash screen, then shows a blue screen message, “A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down…”, and goes into an endless cycle of rebooting to that point. What am I missing?

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The one thing I can see from just reading about it is the following:

“To use VHDs produced by Disk2vhd, create a VM with the desired characteristics and add the VHDs to the VM’s configuration as IDE disks. On first boot, a VM booting a captured copy of Windows will detect the VM’s hardware and automatically install drivers, if present in the image.”

To me that would seem to indicate you can’t just point at it but must add it as one of the IDE disks. Looks like something I should try to find out more specifics. The two other possibilities of why it won’t run are its over 127 gigs in size or the image wasn’t limited to the system partition only.

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Byron,

Yes. I created a new VM and then pointed to the file created by Disk2VHD as the hard drive for that VM. The file size is about 22 GB. Only the c: drive was imaged.

I appreciate the suggestions, but I am still looking for an answer.

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I didn’t have any luck with Disk2VHD either and I tried it with VirtualBox and VMPlayer as well. When I made the VHD I had the fix HAL checked but it just won’t boot.

I did however have luck using Acronis True Image to make and convert a system partition to .vhd and get it running in VirtualBox. I haven’t checked yet but I imagine some of the programs will not work or deactivate, Photoshop in particular. At least I know it can be done.

One thing on the 22 GB vhd; how large was the partition? Mine was 45 GB so I made the VM 55 GB and the actual size is showing as 186 GB, the size of the partition it came from so it may be possible that Virtual PC is looking at the partition size and not the actual size? Just a thought anyway, might just be a characteristic of using Acronis Workstation.

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Thanks, Byron. I have Acronis and will try that route.

I had installed VirtualBox not long ago to check it out, but did not see any advantages, so I removed it. If the native MS VM cannot open the Acronis image as a VM, then I am willing to reinstall VirtualBox, per your success, to try that. I can also try VMPlayer, which I have also already tried with the Disk2VHD image.

The partition is only 30 GB total, so that is not the issue.

Will post again once I have had time to try an Acronis image, in case anyone else is finding this thread useful.

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Well, I tried this with Acronis and am even more frustrated now. I purchased the Acronis Plus Pack for the Universal Restore feature, which is advertised as being capable of doing a real to virtual migration (as well as restoring to dissimilar hardware). When I could not figure out how to select a virtual hard drive as the destination, I contacted Acronis tech support, who informed me that feature only works when imaging Windows 7. So I am back to square one – now with the impression that it is not possible to create a virtual machine from an image of an existing computer running XP. Has anyone out there ever done this?

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From what I have found out, in many cases wrong disc drivers are the reason, why a cloned os won’t boot. For my own, I have tested it intensive with VMware Player and VirtualBox. In both cases, the cloned Win XP came with a IDE driver, whilst the VM provides SCSI oder SATA disks. I solved it using VMware Converter to create a .vmdk, that was bootable at least (but the clone is pretty slow).

So as a conclusion, I gave up cloning and use instead a clean install (either on a .vhd or .vdi or .vmdk disk).

I have written a bit about this issues in my blog (http://www.borncity.com/blog/category/virtualisierung/) – but the whole stuff is only in German – sorry.

Ex Microsoft Windows (Insider) MVP, Microsoft Answers Community Moderator, Blogger, Book author

https://www.borncity.com/win/

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So as a conclusion, I gave up cloning and use instead a clean install (either on a .vhd or .vdi or .vmdk disk).

I’m beginning to concur that a new virtual install is the way to go; it sometimes takes longer to [re]set up a converted image that it does just to go with a new one…if it can be made to boot at all.

I just went through 3 days of testing and failing and testing and failing and finally succeeding, only to have to reconfigure a ton of stuff to get the VM to stop popping up errors all over the place about missing that and this and other non-existent hardware (creating a new user and abandoning the old usually solves most of the problems).

Acronis Workstation Image of a single boot partition>Acronis conversion to .vhd (tried VMWare .tib conversion and .vmdk creation also)>VirtualBox import(tried VMWare and Virtual PC is currently halted from executing on my Win7 systems due to a bug report by Microsoft) is the only combination I’ve been able to make work but even then I was getting blue screened and tried the UBCD4Win to rewrite the boot record and replace the IDE or SATA driver with a generic IDE one and finally I rolled the registry back three months, and for whatever reason, that worked.

So its a good fist-pumping moment when the Windows boot logo comes up after all that but….a new install would have been quicker and sure-fire…

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