Win7 Support

[Mikesan152]

Greetings!  I am currently running Ubuntu 22.04 and Win7 64 in a dual boot system.  I need to upgrade my mobo/cpu etc. but the newer ones don't support Win7.  Is there a way to use VMware to build a virtual machine on my new system(Ubuntu) and to completely import my current Win7 OS to include all the programs and files? (Virtualize the entire drive...)

Thank you.  My apologies if I'm posting in the wrong section or asking an idiotic question.

Best regards,

Mike

[Alfista_PS]

Hi,

yes, there is full support for all OSes even old in VMware.

You can use VMware Workstation application as a Player or PRO https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation-player.html

And for migrating the existing OS VMware has an app that you install on the Win 7 system and that will do it a VM from it. Its VMware Converter http://www.vmware.com/download/converter/ 

[Mikesan152]

Excellent!!!  Thanks so much.  I guess I came to the right place! 

Thanks again!!

[Alfista_PS]

Its a pleasure to help 🙂

[Mikesan152]

Hello again.

To run my Win7 64 OS, must I also run Hyper V?  And if so, does that run under Player? (I 'm trying to grease the skids ahead of implementation.)

Thank you!!!

Mike

[Alfista_PS]

Hi,

no, you can run all Windows OS's run directly under VMware as all other OS's too.

You don't need to run HyperV, but if you will to learn it it should be possible to run HyperV in virtualisation but I think there will be needed ESXi (vSphere) to run it, but with this I don't have extra experience while I prefer VMware for HyperV or KVM.

[Mikesan152]

Hello.

My new Ubuntu build is complete.  I have used the converter utility to convert my existing Win 7-64 to a virtual machine.  I have copied the Win 7 VMDK into the location but it won't power on.  I get "Failed to load /usr/lib/vmware/settings. No such file or directory"  I have updated the kernel to 6.0 and installed gcc 12.02.

Thank you and very best regards.

Mike

PS. I was wondering why I wasn't receiving notifications in my email.  Turns out they had all gone into junk mail folder.  I apologize if I was slow in responding.  Thanks again!