Converter 3.0.1 hangs when doing Win-XP Pro sp2

[awilcox]

Hello,

Planning to use WS6 with Linux host, and most of my major applications are on Win XP ... and would be a big hassle to reload on a WinXP guest.

Converter should be able to make a VM image of WinXP that I could then run with the Linux host. That was my happy plan.

Windows is the only OS on partition 1 (72GB NTFS). Partition 2 has extended 😧 (43GB) plus E: (75GB). The idea was to convert only the 50GB of C onto a 65GB VM disk. I was going to put it on the empty E: extended partition. (I tried putting it on a completely different drive too.)

Have c:\SysPrepXPsp2 properly setup for XP sp 2. (I tried putting it on other disk, but didn't make a difference.)

Converter hangs at 11% done. Totally lockups XP after awhile. "Taking snapshot" finishes, and the next line after that where it starts to do the image it quits.

I tried coming in using Win2kPro on remote machine, but even though both PC's were logged in as "administrator," I got errored at login step because I didn't have admin rights. Go figure.

So I'm stuck at every turn here. I would think XP Pro would be a no-brainer to make a VM out of.

What's missing here that I need to fix? Ideas?

Thanks,

Alan

[admin]

I would recomending sending the new VM to a Windows network share across the network, not onto another partition of your computer you are trying to convert.

[awilcox]

I don't have the space out on the network. However, I did try sending to a USB2 drive and got exactly the same lockup.

[admin]

Did you select only the C partition when specifying the clone?

[awilcox]

Yes, I did. The other drives I figured to pick up as shares later.

At that point, Converter said something about not having a boot disk. The color of the C: icon said it was the boot disk, so I selected "yes" and went forward.

[admin]

It could be that VSS isn't properly working, which is needed to take the disk snapshot.

Verify this is working by typing “net start vss” or "net start swprv" on a cmd line. If VSS does not start up, then VSS is improperly configured on the source.

[awilcox]

Both vss and swprv started up ok (they were off). Converter did get through the "snapshot" before locking up ... at the very same place as always: "cloning ..."

When it locks, the gui is still active ... for a little while and then it's stuck. It appears as if there's a memory leak in the application (or Windows) ... and after a few seconds of moving the mouse, then nothing is responsive. Even ctl-alt-del. If I don't move the mouse for a number of minutes, it still a few seconds before my 2GB RAM is used up.

[admin]

I'm speculating that it might be having problems with placing an image onto the very disk that it is creating a snapshot image. That is why I'm suggesting you look for a share that is on a separate machine.

[awilcox]

After starting the services as above, I retried out to the USB drive with the same lack of success.

This time, the ungraceful XP restart trashed some of my 😧 drive.

Thanks for your help, but I think I'll set this ill-fated move to a VM aside for awhile until the software is a bit more polished.

Sorry it didn't work out.

Alan

[admin]

A correction to my earlier post...I checked with VMware Tech Support and they have reported that placing a new VM onto a new partition of the same disk being converted, as well as another device such as a USB key should work.

What was running on your system while you initiated the conversion? It could have been an application or service that caused VSS to hang.

[awilcox]

No applications running; I made a point of closing down all the junk that shows up in the system tray too.

I also did net start vss[/b] and net start swprv[/b].

I did have task manager graphing CPU and memory ... and throughout the whole debacle everything looked normal until I tried to close down Converter with its red kill-task button. At that point memory allocation stayed about the same (to my surprise), and CPU activity dropped to nil ... flatline dead.

Upon reboot I see that 34 vmdk (436 MB), one vmx, and one vmdk.lck files were created.