vcenter converter stand alone trying to make vm of a existing installation on D drive

[Rick51]

Greetings  Not sure were to post this so if not correct please boot it to the correct help group. 

I am attempting to make a vm from a old Windows installation installed on D drive. This hard drive was in an old computer to which I installed in my new computer. The new pc sees only the drive and is not configured in the boot menu Of course, I have my main Windows on C drive. 

The program completes, but when trying to create and start the vm , it errors saying can't find boot files. I have selected the entirety of D drive and also tried just the partition with Windows. 

All I need is to be able to run the old version of Windows in a VM, There is nothing else of value on the drive other than the normal restore partitions etc. any help or suggestion greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance

[plamen_d]

Hello

This is a bit strange case. You may try conversion of your machine (e.g. install Converter in it and convert 'this local machine') but then select only drive and deselect reconfiguration. After the cloning completes, run c 'Configure machine' on the cloned VM. And cross fingers

HTH,

Plamen

[Rick51]

Thanks for the response. To clarify, do you mean select the entire d drive or just the Windows partition? I have not used Configure machine by itself, is there anything I need to do there? In fact this is the first time with this program, so any suggestions are appreciated. 

I have made vm's from a DVD before with other programs, but never a working drive.

Thanks

Rick

[Rick51]

Oh and one other thing I forgot to mention, I cant boot to the D drive on my new machine so I am working off of Windows 11 .  The d drive did work ok in the old machine

[plamen_d]

I am not sure this will work, but it is worth trying.
Clone the whole disk. If you have some other program to make an image of the whole disk and then a VM from it, even better. If not - try with Converter - all volumes in and deselect reconfiguration.
Configure machine is nothing special from a user's point of view; just select the VM you have created.

[Rick51]

Well I got it to work. What I had to do was d/l a program called vmware converter. I did as you suggested and when completed I had 2 files. One was the config file (0) and the other to operating system (1).

I then fired up VM Ware and created a new VM machine. First I used the config iso or file ending in o to create the machine (installing the operating system later). I then restarted the VM program and changed the iso to the second file ending 1 and thank the Good Lord it worked.

Thought I would share what worked and Thank you for pointing me in the right direction

Much appreciated

Rick