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From: Nel on 8 Apr 2010 11:20
Hi,

I would like to run a cloned HDD with all installed apps from an old
XP system in a VPC environment under Vista. I backed up the entire HDD
of the old PC using EASEUS Todo BAckup, and restored the disk using a
bootable CD under VPC. I can't get the system to boot under VPC
however.

The FAQ of the backup software says it could be caused by the
destination HDD does not have the exact parameters (sectors, heads) of
the source drive http://www.todo-backup.com/support/faq/general8.htm

But in VPC you cannot alter these parameters when creating a VHD, can
you? Does anyone have a workaround?

rgds,
NF
From: Bo Berglund on 8 Apr 2010 12:02
On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:20:47 +0200, Nel <nelfrikandel(a)invalid.org>
wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I would like to run a cloned HDD with all installed apps from an old
>XP system in a VPC environment under Vista. I backed up the entire HDD
>of the old PC using EASEUS Todo BAckup, and restored the disk using a
>bootable CD under VPC. I can't get the system to boot under VPC
>however.
>
>The FAQ of the backup software says it could be caused by the
>destination HDD does not have the exact parameters (sectors, heads) of
>the source drive http://www.todo-backup.com/support/faq/general8.htm
>
>But in VPC you cannot alter these parameters when creating a VHD, can
>you? Does anyone have a workaround?
>
>rgds,
>NF
That is typically not the reason for a failure to boot from a physical
computer backup being restired to a virtual computer. The reason is
instead that the hardware is way too different!
The physical PC and the emulated hardware of VPC differ too much.
You have to do a repaoir install of XP on top of the restored image to
fix this.

Or start over using VMWARE instead, they have a conversion application
(free) that can create a bootable copy of your existing PC for a
virtual machine.
Then that can be used under VMWARE Player 3 (free) and you will get
minimal problems. It even handles USB fully, which VPC2007 does not
and probably never will.

--

Bo Berglund (Sweden)
From: Steve Jain on 8 Apr 2010 12:33
"Nel" wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I would like to run a cloned HDD with all installed apps from an old
> XP system in a VPC environment under Vista. I backed up the entire HDD
> of the old PC using EASEUS Todo BAckup, and restored the disk using a
> bootable CD under VPC. I can't get the system to boot under VPC
> however.
>
> The FAQ of the backup software says it could be caused by the
> destination HDD does not have the exact parameters (sectors, heads) of
> the source drive http://www.todo-backup.com/support/faq/general8.htm
>
> But in VPC you cannot alter these parameters when creating a VHD, can
> you? Does anyone have a workaround?
>
> rgds,
> NF
>

1. How big is the image? It if is more than 127GB you can't mount it
successfully for booting in VPC. 127GB is a hard limit of the actual disk
size, not the amount of data. You need to resize it to 127GB or less before
you can attempt to boot. Google VHD resizer for links.
2. After that you will likely need to repair Windows since the hardware
emulated by the VM is not the same as the old physical computers. You will
need to boot from your CD and to a repair installation of Windows.
From: Andreas Ziegler on 8 Apr 2010 13:22
Nel wrote:
> The FAQ of the backup software says it could be caused by the
> destination HDD does not have the exact parameters (sectors, heads) of
> the source drive http://www.todo-backup.com/support/faq/general8.htm
>
> But in VPC you cannot alter these parameters when creating a VHD, can
> you? Does anyone have a workaround?
>
>
As Bo said, it's caused by the differences in hardware. I was very
successful in migrating a live system once where the complete hardware
was exchanged by making a partition copy (with dd from a rescue CD) and
afterwards performing a repair install from the windos installation CD.

On the other hand, I'm stuck right now trying to migrate VPC virtual
machines to KVM/QEMU. I do not even get the installation CD to offer me
the repair installation.

You might find some useful hints about this kind of migration here:

http://blog.loftninjas.org/2009/05/11/migrating-virtual-pc-windows-servers-to-kvm/

Just ignore the platforms being discussed and concentrate on what is
said about
fixing the underlying issues. Hopefully it will present some new
insights for your migration.

Regards,
Andreas Ziegler
From: Nel on 8 Apr 2010 17:11
On Thu, 8 Apr 2010 09:33:01 -0700, Steve Jain
<essjae(a)community.nospam> wrote:
>1. How big is the image? It if is more than 127GB you can't mount it
>successfully for booting in VPC. 127GB is a hard limit of the actual disk
>size, not the amount of data. You need to resize it to 127GB or less before
>you can attempt to boot. Google VHD resizer for links.

Thanks, no it is 30Gb only

>2. After that you will likely need to repair Windows since the hardware
>emulated by the VM is not the same as the old physical computers. You will
>need to boot from your CD and to a repair installation of Windows.

I tried this but the repair option does not continue after entering
the administrator pwd (booted from CD and having entered the R option)
It just stays in a command prompt at c:\windows (Or do I need to
startup an exec manually from there perhaps?)
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