I have a question about hardware replacement!

[Wecher22]

I was going to write Windows 7 with VMWARE, but I suddenly got curious so I have a question.

If I change the hardware of a computer running a virtual machine, won't the programs of the virtual machine work properly?

For example, I'm currently using the RTX 2080 for Intel 9700k, and if I change to the RTX 3080 for the Rizen 5800x, I wonder if the VMWARE virtual environment that I backed up in the moved environment will still work.

[scott28tt]

It might depend on the guest OS, some can be sensitive about a change in the underlying CPU manufacturer.

It would be best to shutdown the VM on the old hardware so that the guest OS will boot from scratch on the new hardware.

[RaSystemlord · Accepted solution]

If the question is simply that will a Windows VM work in a different hardware environment, the answer is yes.

I have worked, as of late, with Windows XP/7/10 VMs, which I run in Windows VMware, but occasionally copy to Ubuntu Linux environment. Windows environment is a laptop and Linux a workstation - so all of the hardware is different, but processor is still some i7 version, lately.

Previously, my VMs were either on Windows Intel-based laptop or AMD-based workstation, but copied or moved VMs between those. I have never stopped using any VM computer, because it wouldn't work in the other environment. If processor is changing, an extra reboot will be required before the actual use of the VM in the new environment ... VMware will tell you when to do that.

Occasionally, I have used lots of other OS's in the mix and never even considered that VM wouldn't work elsewhere. However, if the VM OS is such that it cannot update any of its drivers on the fly, then, I guess, it wouldn't work. Since XP times, I have not used any of those OS's ... perhaps Windows NT (first version in 1994) was such, but I'm not sure.

[Wecher22]

thanks!

[Wecher22]

thanks!!