Transferring Virtual PC back to Physical PC

A

AndrewDC

Bit poster
Hello,

I would like to hand back the company laptop with my current virtual PC image but can't find out how to do it.

Creating a virtual PC and moving it to Mac was so easy and the experience so good that I haven't switched on the laptop which the company issued me with for more than a year! I am now thinking of leaving the company and want to give them back a working PC with the current image on it. Can anyone tell me how to do this?

Andrew
 
There's no simple way to do it, for going the PC > Parallels way there's an application for that, Parallels Transporter, but there's no application for doing the reverse.

So, it's not impossible, but it's a bit complex. Basically you would need to dwell with a generalist cloning software like Acronis True Image or G4U. The difficulty is the hardware part, as Windows doesn't like to be moved to different hardware, PT took care of that, in this case with Acronis, there's a plugin that lets you clone to different hardware. Without it, once you clone and start the computer you'll get a blue screen and you'll need to go into "repair install" to force the recognition of the new hardware, like I told you, not simple stuff, but you have the bits of information you need in this post, happy googling, and good luck!
 
AndrewDC said:
Hello,

I would like to hand back the company laptop with my current virtual PC image but can't find out how to do it.

Creating a virtual PC and moving it to Mac was so easy and the experience so good that I haven't switched on the laptop which the company issued me with for more than a year! I am now thinking of leaving the company and want to give them back a working PC with the current image on it. Can anyone tell me how to do this?

Andrew
Click to expand...

One thought would be to use Windows backup to create a back up of the machine and then boot from the installation DVD and do a restore.
 
JohnNash said:
One thought would be to use Windows backup to create a back up of the machine and then boot from the installation DVD and do a restore.
Click to expand...

Not that simple.
Like I said, Windows doesn't like to change hardware and this is not just in terms o licensing.
 
Meh

Specimen said:
Not that simple.
Like I said, Windows doesn't like to change hardware and this is not just in terms o licensing.
Click to expand...

It's not that bad these days, if he's got a common enough laptop/desktop the drivers will already be native. If not then all he needs to do is pre-download the drivers onto a USB drive. He will however have to re-activate.

I never said it was going to be easy, but he'd have the same experience using any of the disk cloning programs. In all honestly if it were me I would just do a fresh install.

Edit/Extra Info - Just caught that this is a company laptop. If they have an EA, they probably also have a licensing server, so it'll re-activate when he connects it to their domain again.
 
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JohnNash said:
It's not that bad these days, if he's got a common enough laptop/desktop the drivers will already be native. If not then all he needs to do is pre-download the drivers onto a USB drive. He will however have to re-activate.

I never said it was going to be easy, but he'd have the same experience using any of the disk cloning programs. In all honestly if it were me I would just do a fresh install.

Edit/Extra Info - Just caught that this is a company laptop. If they have an EA, they probably also have a licensing server, so it'll re-activate when he connects it to their domain again.
Click to expand...

Are you saying this because you have actually done this, or are you presuming it works the way you are imagining?

Because I've done this myself. The problem is not the lack of drivers.

And he won't have the same experience as any of the disk cloning programs, particularly if the programs prepares the window installation to be moved to different hardware (again, it's not the drivers). This is what Parallels Transporter does, it's called SysPrep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysprep

Windows operating system installations include many unique elements per installation that need to be "generalized" before capturing and deploying a disk image to multiple computers. Some of these elements include:
Sysprep seeks to solve these issues by allowing for the generation of new computer names, unique SIDs, and custom driver cache databases during the Sysprep process.
Click to expand...
 
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In simpler terms, if you simply clone with no SysPrep or restore to a different hardware, you are welcomed with a bluescreen when you boot Windows.
 
Specimen said:
In simpler terms, if you simply clone with no SysPrep or restore to a different hardware, you are welcomed with a bluescreen when you boot Windows.
Click to expand...

You forget that he's taking the image back to the original hardware. I do see your point however and have experienced it.

To answer your above question, no I have not gone from VM to HW before. However if you think about it, the destination is actually the original hardware the system was originally installed on so the drivers would pick up. He might have to screw with it a little system's SID would/should remain the same, and I wouldn't want to sys prep it remove it to begin with. All I'm saying that it'd be possible, not easy but possible. I (again) wouldn't take the time personally.

In all actuality if he's going back to the same HW to begin with, unless he wiped the drive, I don't even see the point if all he's trying to do is give them back a functioning laptop. Remove the VM from the domain, re-join the laptop and be done with it.
 
It's not a question of going back to the original hardware, SysPrep is used to clone machines with the SAME hardware. You have no experience in what you are talking about, I have, the reason I'm explaining this in more detail is just so other people aren't mislead. Again, it's not the drivers. For Windows it's not the same hardware it's a different hardware, the drivers maybe there, but it doesn't matter, the machine as far as Windows is concerned has a total different hardware than what was running before.

The result with the 'original' hardware would still be: Bluescreen. And this is due to the way Windows works, unfortunately, and contrary to common sense, they actually make it difficult to move Windows to even slightly different hardware.

Please, this forum serves to help people, if you aren't sure of what you are talking about you are responsible for people losing their time and/or their data following your advice.
 
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Last Comment

Specimen said:
It's not a question of going back to the original hardware, SysPrep is used to clone machines with the SAME hardware. You have no experience in what you are talking about, I have, the reason I'm explaining this in more detail is just so other people aren't mislead. Again, it's not the drivers. For Windows it's not the same hardware it's a different hardware, the drivers maybe there, but it doesn't matter, the machine as far as Windows is concerned has a total different hardware than what was running before.

The result with the 'original' hardware would still be: Bluescreen. And this is due to the way Windows works, unfortunately, and contrary to common sense, they actually make it difficult to move Windows to even slightly different hardware.

Please, this forum serves to help people, if you aren't sure of what you are talking about you are responsible for people losing their time and/or their data following your advice.
Click to expand...

Specimen,

I actually started this post as a tirade against you and then better judgement won, so I decided to make it constructive instead. So please take 5 min to read the below. If you like, you can then email me under the email address is my profile if you have questions.

I read your post saying I didn't know anything last night and thought about what technically could be wrong with what I said based on your responses. I really couldn't find anything so this morning I went ahead an did a lab test on it. I encourage you to actually try it if you have the hardware/means and time.

After testing, I will retract what I said about using Windows backup. You can probably still use it, but you will run into issues depending on the size of the target drive. (mine was too small) Instead I decided to clone the drive to an image file on my server using Clonezilla.


Download and install Clonezilla from Sourceforge. You can then burn to a DVD if you choose, I chose to leave it on my file system as an ISO. I did eventually have to burn the ISO to DVD to boot the laptop because I was too lazy to convert the ISO to a USB usable format (was a time/effort thing).

Information:

The VM I used was a VM created from a Windows 7 installation I converted from a Dell Latitude D620 using parallels transporter. This will also be the destination for the VM when converted back from the VM. The size was approximately 16 gb.


Process



1. On the SOURCE VM - configure the DVD drive to either boot from the Clonezilla ISO or a DVD of the Clonezilla ISO.
2. Boot the VM from the Clonezilla ISO/DVD.
3. Image the SOURCE VM using the default values Clonezilla has. I chose to save my image to a server I have rather than a USB drive, but you also have that option.
4. Boot the DESTINATION (Laptop) from the Clonezilla DVD.
5. Choose to restore a disk image to disk.

Note - I have to use advanced options at this point to tell the software to essentially ignore the size of the target disk and resize the partitions according to the partitions on the image.

6. Once the restore is complete, reboot the DESTINATION machine.
7. The DESTINATION machine will then say it needs to run a chkdisk, allow it to do so.
8. The DESTINATION will then go thru a hardware detect phase and install needed drivers. Your experience may vary depending on hardware, but I had one reboot after the driver installs were completed.

That's basically it. In actuality it took me longer to work around the issue with the physical size of my destination hard drive than anything else. The whole process took maybe an hour from starting the image save to the last reboot the laptop performed. Not a single blue screen to be had along the way. I also rebooted several times afterwards to make sure nothing would happen.

I will admit the above process is probably a little more than your average person will want to go thru unless they have a serious need for it. It was possible and actually easy, for me at least, despite your above comments. However I have about 20 years of experience in supporting Windows environments, so maybe I have a little edge over you and the average user. (that last little bit is replacing the tirade I mentioned above. But you really should perhaps consider that people don't just give advice from ignorant assumptions all the time.)

Anyway, feel free to test it out and see what happens on your side. Let me know if you have any questions.

Oh - and if you'd like to thank me and/or apologize to me as a customer, as you essentially were insulting me above: I'd be more than willing to take a free upgrade to version 9 when it comes out in trade. :)
 
You're not my customer. Please read the last line in my signature.

You don't take into account that the user never mentioned what version of Windows, the results vary between 2000, XP, Vista, 7 or 8, nor does it take into account that the user never mentioned if it's the same original hardware.

Like I said on my original post, if you get blue screened, you should do a "repair install".

Still, the result here is that you suggested users could just use Windows backup and restore, and now you know they can't, you should correct your original post. On the other hand everything you said confirms my original post, using a cloning app. which deals with a generic cloning operation to another hardware. You didn't get bluescreened, lucky you, that's not always the case and I can confirm it.

If you feel insulted that's not my responsibility, I'm not a PR and I don't work for Parallels, you're the one that confirmed you hadn't done this procedure before, I just confirmed the facts.

Fun fact: You can actually use the Backup/Restore procedure, but you have to make a "barebones" install in the target hardware, and it might just actually work.
 
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Whatever dude. I was half joking about the free upgrade.

I am however somewhat saddened by the fact that's all you got out of my response.

Don't worry - this is/was my last post of this subject. Have a nice day.
 
dear EdsonS i do not know what was your experience with acronis but mine was horrible ( did have a working licence and all - no crack bs ) and did not work

I am trying to move a Virtual machine ( W10 64bit - was created a vm never bare metal ) from my mac parallels to my mac's secondary hdd (on a partition )

Can anyone help ?

Thank you
 
Hey I did manage to do it in the end. It was painful but it managed to get me into a working OS.
You need to have a keyboard USB plugged in, this helped....

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/articles/virtual-to-physical/

I used the trial version but it worked as expected and was a while ago now it allowed me to have the machine as is. The issue I guess you need to check also is that you have the correct keys for OS again as it may ask you to register (Windows).
 
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