Have you copied or moved Windows 10? when moving virtual machine to another iMac

Parallels Desktop for mac 14 Windows 10
Moving virtual machine from one iMac to another iMac
After copying to new iMac, started Parallels. File Open. Selected Windows 10.pvn to include in Parallels Control Panel. (There is no installation configuration provided for moving the virtual machine. Only moving from Windows machine or moving from Bootcamp to VM.)
Selected VM. Clicked open. When continuing to the configuration process presented with message and asked to select move or select copied. There is no explanation of the impact of the decision on new iMac. There is no explanation of the impact of VM on old iMac.
What do each of the options do?

 

Hi, if you don't want to lose work progress and install your virtual machine from scratch on the new Mac, you can move your virtual machine to the new Mac. Please click on "here" for understanding in a better way.

 

Well yeah... I know I am copying the Whole VM to the new Mac to keep all the files, obviously
If you read the dialog box attached. Copying versus new install is NOT the question.
Instead ...what happens clicking each button when clicked on "move" "copy" AND refers to MAC address. What does it change / not change. What does the change in Mac address do to license W10 for example?
Please clarify as there is no KB article related to the dialog box function.
Also, There is no link attached to "here"
Please click on "here" for understanding in a better way.

 

Since there's no link I can only assume the reference was to the "Transfer" function. I'm trying that now and describe my experience so far. But from everything I've gone through in the last week or so I have very little confidence it will work or be a "better" way. For me at this point, however, it's now become the only way.

I have had very bad experiences copying a Windows 10 VM and opening it on a new machine-- I get errors saying the hard drive is corrupted or there's no boot sector. I spent quite a bit of time on the phone and in a remote control session with a Parallels support technician who was unable to fix the problem. He said he would escalate it and I would get a call back within 24 hours. Of course, no one ever called me back.

Then I saw the option to "Transfer" the VM, which apparently compresses it substantially so it can be moved more easily. I initiated that process but so far it has been running for more than 30 hours and looks like it will take another 3-4 hours to complete. I have SSD external drives and it only takes about 20 minutes to copy the VM. I had no idea how time consuming this would be and obviously it doesn't matter how small the file ends up, it's not worth the time to do this.

The problem, however, is once started there appears to be no turning back. Last evening I tried to contact support because I was getting very worried about this process. I was issued a CaseID but when I called in and entered that ID the automated system said "Invalid PIN". I hung up and tried again but this time I was told the PIN was valid but the support window expired. Next, I tried a chat. After getting about 30 messages saying all agents were busy, I got a message telling me to try later and the chat ended.

So, I tried one last time to get phone support. The system took my ID but after waiting for about 20 minutes I was informed all agents were busy and I should try another time..... This is a disgrace and especially upsetting because my entire business is at a standstill since now I can't even run the one functional VM because it's "Packing" to prepare it for a transfer.

I hope I'm wrong, but from all these experiences I'm really totally freaked out about the possibility that after this VM is compressed it will not expand and install properly and I will be in a really terrible fix....

 

So here's an update and further insight into what's going on. First, I am much relieved to say it seems to have worked and it looks like I have successfully transferred a functioning Windows 10 VM to the machine I had until now been unsuccessful in doing. So that is great news. But it was very painful to get here and before people utilize this process they should be aware of the enormous impact the physical configuration of their computers may have.

Here's what happens. If you right-click in the control center on a VM that is shut down you will see a choice to "Prepare for Transfer". For those who had problems copying VMs to other machines that's like an oasis in the desert. When you select that option it verifies the files and initiates "Packing"--Parallels' name for their compression algorithm, tracked by a progress bar. and renames the .pvm file to .pvmi. Upon completion, Parallels calculates a checksum and saves it into a text file and changes the name to .pvmp--the extra "p" is for "Package". That file (and the txt file) are copied to an external drive or another computer and opened from the control center menu on the destination machine, at which time the process begins in reverse: the file is verified, unpacked and rechecked, again illustrated by a progress bar.

My .pvm file was about 400gb, but it had about 30gb of reclaimable space. When packing started nothing appeared on the progress bar for a very long time. I had to pause it from time to time for battery or other reasons (the packing process virtually monopolizes the CPU) and each time you resume it verifies the file again. Often it refused to resume, saying I had to shut down the VM--which wasn't running--so I had to force quit Parallels. Sometimes I had to restart the entire machine.

When something finally appeared on the progress bar it still didn't look like it was moving at all. My eyes were playing tricks on me so I ended up positioning the progress bar next to the corner of another window to see if it moved. At this point I tried--unsuccessfully--to get tech support and when that failed I was beginning to panic since my backup copies of other VMs didn't include important recent work. Furthermore, I couldn't even install any of them on my other machine after it returned from an Apple repair with a wiped hard drive. When I tried creating a new VM and copying files from the .hdd files I ran into Windows licensing issues about which Microsoft's support was as bad as Parallels'.

At that point, I needed to understand what was going on. The activity monitor showed 95% CPU use by the packer and a little disk activity, but the timestamps and sizes of the main components of the .pvmi file didn't change. When I looked at the contents more closely I could see several .tmp files and finally figured out one was the original uncompressed hard drive and the other was the resulting compressed file. The size of the first one went down as it was processed and those contents, and the other one increased accordingly, reduced by the compression factor. But the increments were so small it was clear this would take forever. I tried copying the .hdd file and adding it to another VM, but it wasn't a usable disk image. So, I just had to wait and watch the grass grow.

It took almost 30 hours for the "packing" process to finally complete on a 2016 MacBook Pro with 16g of ram and a 1tb ssd of which about 50gb was available at the start. The good news is it seemed to complete without error and created a "package" of about 250gb. I copied it to an external ssd, which took about 15 minutes, and then copied it to the other machine. Once I made a copy, I tried to open the package on the old machine to make sure everything worked.

So, everyone needs to understand exactly how machine sensitive this process is. On the first machine it took at least 5 minutes to verify the file and when the "unpack" process started it looked very much like it was going to take as much time as it did to pack. When I opened the file on the other machine--a 16" 2018 8 core MacBook Pro with 64gb of ram and a 4tb drive-- everything flew. It was verified and unpacked in about 20 minutes, at which point the other machine had barely unpacked 10%. Had I known that, even though I couldn't run a copied VM on the faster machine, I would have saved a whole lot of time if I used that machine to compres a copy of it.

Hope this is useful.

 

Ya all - nice discussion. Let's stick to the topic and address the dialog box options. We are in essence putting an existing hard drive in a different iMac.
Dialog box says "Have you copied or moved Windows 10?"
Default bottom Copied -
It gives a new MAC address! Where? - parallels configuration or in Windows 10 OS?
Once copied button is selected what does Parallels Desktop do to Parallels and to Windows 10?
Next steps, I am guessing, put Windows 10 icon in Parallels Control Panel to click open Windows 10 VM. How will Windows 10 react to the change in MAC address?
Optional bottom Moved -
Answer same questions for NOT changing MAC address.

 

The whole Windows 10 VM was copied via network connection from one iMac (6 core 128gb memory 2tb FHD), where it will remain, to another iMac (8 core 128gb memory 3rb FHD, to create another and new licensed Windows 10.
I have had no issues doing this with window XP and prior. Not done the process on Windows 7. Was not presented with the dialog box which is subject of this topic.
Don't anticipate any issues once getting past the dialog box (image provided) and knowing what the OSs do once copy option is selected.