[OT] Virtual machines and disk images

Rob Horton

There seems to be some knowledgeable people on this forum hence it being
a good place to ask the following question.

I have an old XP machine with a 60GB disk and a new XP machine with a
500GB disk. If I create a additional partition on the new machine that
will hold a disk image of the old machine is there any way I can boot it
up whilst the new machine is running by using a virtual machine?

I want to avoid the hassle of rebooting the new machine and selecting a
different partition whenever I want the "old machine" can start up.

Thanks.

POHB

On 23 Jun, 16:57, Rob Horton <yahoo@mr_horton.com> wrote:
> There seems to be some knowledgeable people on this forum hence it being
> a good place to ask the following question.
>
> I have an old XP machine with a 60GB disk and a new XP machine with a
> 500GB disk. If I create a additional partition on the new machine that
> will hold a disk image of the old machine is there any way I can boot it
> up whilst the new machine is running by using a virtual machine?
>
> I want to avoid the hassle of rebooting the new machine and selecting a
> different partition whenever I want the "old machine" can start up.
>
> Thanks.


Sounds like you need VMWare workstation

Geoff Lane

Microsoft were giving away Virtual Server and Virtual PC not so long ago,
perhaps those are still available. FWIW, I have Virtual Server running on
an XP Pro machine with lots of RAM. This works well, although I understand
that Virtual PC would be better. However, the virtual machine won't have
the same hardware as your old machine, and so you probably won't be able to
boot it from a copy of the old hard disk. Instead, you'll need to install
the OS and application software from the old machine.

Clive George

"Geoff Lane" <geoff@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
news:Xns9AC6B7867F07Bgeoffnospam097akdsh@138.199.67.64...
> Microsoft were giving away Virtual Server and Virtual PC not so long ago,
> perhaps those are still available. FWIW, I have Virtual Server running on
> an XP Pro machine with lots of RAM. This works well, although I understand
> that Virtual PC would be better. However, the virtual machine won't have
> the same hardware as your old machine, and so you probably won't be able
> to
> boot it from a copy of the old hard disk. Instead, you'll need to install
> the OS and application software from the old machine.

I believe VMware offers an app to do the migration for you.

cheers,
clive

Just zis Guy, you know?

On Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:57:22 +0100, Rob Horton <yahoo@mr_horton.com>
said in <A9SdnZl5-Zx_WsLVnZ2dnUVZ8sHinZ2d@pipex.net>:

>There seems to be some knowledgeable people on this forum hence it being
>a good place to ask the following question.
>
>I have an old XP machine with a 60GB disk and a new XP machine with a
>500GB disk. If I create a additional partition on the new machine that
>will hold a disk image of the old machine is there any way I can boot it
>up whilst the new machine is running by using a virtual machine?
>
>I want to avoid the hassle of rebooting the new machine and selecting a
>different partition whenever I want the "old machine" can start up.

I reckon you want VMware converter starter edition and a copy of
VMware player, which are both SFP.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

Jim Price

john.sabine@gmail.com wrote:
> Hijacking this thread a teensy bit, I administer a couple of machines
> for a charity I volunteer for. One critical piece of software will not
> run
> unless the user has admin rights on the (XP) machine.

Doh!

> Can I install a VM with a user who has admin rights on the VM, but
> running as a normal user on the underlying instance of XP?

It's going to depend on why the app needs admin rights, and to what.
There are other options to sort that kind of thing out too, like running
the app using a different account's credentials (without needing the
virtual machine at all), or setting appropriate permissions on the
things a normal user can't get at (if that doesn't just bork the
machine's security). So the short answer is yes to running the app with
admin inside the VM, but whether the app can do what it needs to from
inside the VM is another question, as is whether a VM is the most
appropriate solution. Some more details might help get a better answer.
Other things to try are granting the user admin rights to install it
then seeing how it runs when the admin rights are removed. Often its
only the installation which needs admin, or you might find out from the
error message what it is that it needs admin rights to.

--
JimP

Roger Merriman

<john.sabine@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 23 Jun, 19:05, "Just zis Guy, you know?" <u...@ftc.gov> wrote:
>
> > >I want to avoid the hassle of rebooting the new machine and selecting a
> > >different partition whenever I want the "old machine" can start up.
> >
> > I reckon you want VMware converter starter edition and a copy of
> > VMware player, which are both SFP.
>
> Hijacking this thread a teensy bit, I administer a couple of machines
> for a charity I volunteer for. One critical piece of software will not
> run
> unless the user has admin rights on the (XP) machine.
>
> Can I install a VM with a user who has admin rights on the VM, but
> running as a normal user on the underlying instance of XP?
>
> John

yes virtual machine's will be fine with that as far as the version of XP
thats the beauty of them, as far as the host version of XP is concned
the VM is just a application.

roger
--
www.rogermerriman.com

Dead Paul

On Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:57:22 +0100, Rob Horton wrote:

> There seems to be some knowledgeable people on this forum hence it being a
> good place to ask the following question.
>
> I have an old XP machine with a 60GB disk and a new XP machine with a
> 500GB disk. If I create a additional partition on the new machine that
> will hold a disk image of the old machine is there any way I can boot it
> up whilst the new machine is running by using a virtual machine?
>
> I want to avoid the hassle of rebooting the new machine and selecting a
> different partition whenever I want the "old machine" can start up.
>
> Thanks.

Virtualbox - free.

Microsoft's offering is not as good and it has licensing issues.

You wont even need a seperate partition. Whilst some virtual machines
can use real disk images most people use image files which will not
boot outside of the VM monitor.

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