Yesterday I tried to run Parallels Transporter on an old Windows 2000 machine but it failed. I need this OS because a printer that my wife uses will only print from Windows 2000 and I'd like to have a VM so I don't have to keep the hardware around. I'm really bummed it didn't work. Has anyone else tried this and been successful? Does anyone know of any other software that will convert an already running and booting hard drive into a VM?
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The views expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Embarcadero Technologies.
6 comments:
Chris,
VMWare Converter will do this. I've used it just once; it worked fine. It's a free d/l from the VMWare site.
One caution: It captures *everything* on the existing drive, making the VM pretty big if you don't clean up the junk/unnecessary stuff first.
Ken
Ken,
Thanks for the heads up. I'll give it a try tonight.
I cleaned off everything that wasn't needed already and got it down to 5 gigs. I've gotten so accustomed to WinXP and Vista that I forgot how small Win2k was!
Was about to suggest VMWare converter but then saw Ken had already... Of course, this only works on Wintel machines, I think... Since you mentioned Parallels, I'd take it you're "migrating" to a mac, no?
"Got it down to 5 gig"?
"forgot how small win2K was"?
Hey! Don't put XP and Vista in the same basket, please! One is a decent OS, the other just a brand new and bloated Windows Millenium!
Heck! My WHOLE C: drive with pretty much everything I need including Delphi 2007 only uses (checking...) 4.9 GB and that's including a couple bloated adobe apps! Running on WinXP SP2, of course!
Ok, granted, my swap and temp are somewhere else as are my Documents and another folder with some non-installed utils with some 500 megs or so... :)
Which takes me to this hint: Disable swap and hibernation before the migration; you can re-enable swap after and hibernation is not needed... And thus less GB to move around! ;)
Also, don't forget a minor but important thing: if the OS came with the machine, you'll be breaking the EULA by transferring it to another one, even if a virtual one and even discontinuing the original h/w! That's one of the limitations of OEM versions...
BTW: try TreeSize Pro (or the free version!) and find out exactly where that space is used so you can probably shop a couple more gigs!
Fernando,
Yes, I will be running the VM under an Intel Mac. It'll be interesting to see how it works.
XP has been a great OS for me. I have very few complains about XP. But Win2k was much smaller OS. The machine I want to migrate has nearly all the Adobe software on it, a bunch of very large .psd files that we only print to that printer as well as Office and a few other things that didn't seem worth removing considering I got it down to 5 gigs. I'll look into removing hybernation and swap. I didn't think of those.
I looked over the EULA while I was running Parallels Transporter and found exactly what you mentioned. Fortunately this is a computer I built and then bought Win2k so no problems there. But you got me wondering how many people actually use Transporter or Converter. Considering how good Transporter worked I'd say not many at this point.
I've done this another way too. I've used the Acronis TrueImage software to make a backup of the disk on the computer I want to convert into a VM. Then I create a new VM manually in VMWare and then restore the image of the old computer into that. Has worked flawlessly a couple of times for me.
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