tmm4264
Sep 10, 2007, 09:22 PM
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been trying to figure out how to take the internal hard drive from your company's issued laptop and create a VM out of it. You could probably do it over a network with Parallels Transporter, but I need to make sure that all of the domain settings and software works out of the box or the whole thing won't work at all.
I spent the entire weekend trying to migrate the disk as an ISO made with a slew of different apps. None would boot properly.
I ended up using Ghost 12 to do the job. Ghost 12 will backup a disk and it will also convert a disk to VMWare or VirtualPC format. In my case the conversion to VMWare failed but the VirtualPC disk worked. Once in VirtualPC format I used Parallels Transporter to convert the disk over to a .HDD image.
Now the tricky part, the .HDD bluescreened even in Safe Mode. It is definitely the result of a horrible driver issue. I had to boot from my WinXP SP2 installer CD and perform an in-place upgrade (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341) on my .HDD image. Once that was done the .HDD booted up normally and everything worked!
The whole process will take several hours and there's no guarantee that it will work (YMMV). It worked for me after about 40+ hours of reading web pages and cursing at Windows (this actually helps the OS get installed).
It is my hope that Parallels adds the feature "Import from Externally attached Windows volume" to Parallels Transporter. I know I'm not the only one who wants to migrate a volume from another machine.
Here are the steps to migrate your drive using Ghost:
Prerequisites:
PC with Windows running on it
External hard drive case (for the hard drive you are removing from your work laptop)
Norton Ghost 12
WinXP SP2 installer CD with WinXP serial number (yes, it will ask you for this during the reinstallation; if you don't have one, don't go down this road)
1 - Create a Ghost image of the external drive on the PC (this might work under Boot Camp or another VM, I only tried this on another PC)
2 - Convert the Ghost image over to a VPC image.
3 - Convert the VPC image over to a .HDD image using Parallels Transporter. Make sure you select that you want to boot from the image.
4 - After the conversion process, boot the image and wait for the crippling blue screen.
5 - Insert your Windows XP CD and change the boot order of the VM to boot from the CD first.
6 - Follow the instructions in the MS KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341).
7 - Once Windows is done installing, boot from the hard drive and see if everything works (YMMV).
Not the easiest way to get it done, but it does work (YMMV).
Good luck!
I spent the entire weekend trying to migrate the disk as an ISO made with a slew of different apps. None would boot properly.
I ended up using Ghost 12 to do the job. Ghost 12 will backup a disk and it will also convert a disk to VMWare or VirtualPC format. In my case the conversion to VMWare failed but the VirtualPC disk worked. Once in VirtualPC format I used Parallels Transporter to convert the disk over to a .HDD image.
Now the tricky part, the .HDD bluescreened even in Safe Mode. It is definitely the result of a horrible driver issue. I had to boot from my WinXP SP2 installer CD and perform an in-place upgrade (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341) on my .HDD image. Once that was done the .HDD booted up normally and everything worked!
The whole process will take several hours and there's no guarantee that it will work (YMMV). It worked for me after about 40+ hours of reading web pages and cursing at Windows (this actually helps the OS get installed).
It is my hope that Parallels adds the feature "Import from Externally attached Windows volume" to Parallels Transporter. I know I'm not the only one who wants to migrate a volume from another machine.
Here are the steps to migrate your drive using Ghost:
Prerequisites:
PC with Windows running on it
External hard drive case (for the hard drive you are removing from your work laptop)
Norton Ghost 12
WinXP SP2 installer CD with WinXP serial number (yes, it will ask you for this during the reinstallation; if you don't have one, don't go down this road)
1 - Create a Ghost image of the external drive on the PC (this might work under Boot Camp or another VM, I only tried this on another PC)
2 - Convert the Ghost image over to a VPC image.
3 - Convert the VPC image over to a .HDD image using Parallels Transporter. Make sure you select that you want to boot from the image.
4 - After the conversion process, boot the image and wait for the crippling blue screen.
5 - Insert your Windows XP CD and change the boot order of the VM to boot from the CD first.
6 - Follow the instructions in the MS KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341).
7 - Once Windows is done installing, boot from the hard drive and see if everything works (YMMV).
Not the easiest way to get it done, but it does work (YMMV).
Good luck!