Migrating an XP machine to a VMWare 7 virtual machine

[EdT201110141]

I have an XP machine that has the operating system on the C: drive and the Program Files folder on the 😧 drive. Due to a number of apps being 16 bit and still being needed, I want to move this machine to a VMWare image running on VMWare workstation 7 hosted on Windows 7 SP1 64 bit Ultimate edition.

I can move the existing XP 😧 drive so that it exists as a volume on the Win 7 box, but what is the best way to convert the existing C: drive on the XP machine to a virtual image?  (I can boot to WinPE on this box if necessary, or hot image, whichever is easier). The current C: partition on the XP box is less than 40Gb.  What VMWare tool is used to convert a physical machine to a VM ?  Once this is done, what is the best way of telling the VM to look on the Win 7 box for the 😧 drive ?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

EdT

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - Check out Chapter 6 of http://www.vmware.com/pdf/ws71_manual.pdf

[EdT201110141]

Thanks for that.  My own fault for not following my standard mantra of RTFM.

I have downloaded VMWare vCenter Converter previously and had a quick look at the documentation to see if I could cold clone from WinPE, but it looks like I have to install and hot clone the XP physical machine, or create an image with Acronis or Norton Ghost and convert that.  I'm not a great fan of hot cloning as it's not proved reliable in the past, but if VMWare have got it to work properly, I can but give it a try.

Is there a way of assigning the 😧 drive of the VM to a local volume before the VM boots?  I do not have the VM setup here so forgive me if its another case of RTFM

[weinstein5]

I think the only way to accomplish what you are looking to do - is share the location where D drive is stored woth the Windows 7 machine and then mount it from within the VM -

[EdT201110141]

That is my conclusion - basically "net use d:" to the host machine share. All other suggestions preclude sharing the volume safely.

Thanks for the input!

[WoodyZ]

I have an XP machine that has the operating system on the C: drive and the Program Files folder on the 😧 drive.

If you've installed programs to the 😧 Drive then you will need to virtualize it as well.