Restoring to a virtual machine

I have an old Windows NT 4.0 machine that has a specific configuration used for supporting a legacy system.

I've had the idea that I could make a disc image from that machine and then apply the image to a virtual machine (MS virtual PC) on my main pc. This would allow me to decommission the old machine whilst having almost instant access to that configuration by running the virtual machine.

I assume I'd have to create a virtual machine with the windows NT 4.0 OS installed, install true image and then restore the disc image.

I have True Image 8.0

My question is, will this idea work?

 

No it wil not.

this is wat you need to do.

Buy TrueImage Server v9.1 + Universal Restore
Make the image of the NT server
Create a virtual machine(with IDE harddrive is the easiest for later on) which you boot with the ISO resque cd of Acronis 9.1 Server + universal restore

Then Restore your NT4 Server image van the bootcd choose "use universal restore" do not force any driver and don't search any driver path

after the restore your system wil boot. When in windows install the vmware tools + reboot

Give in a Fixed IP if is was on your server before + Reboot

YOUR DONE! ;-)

 

The machine that I want to back up is NT4 Workstation not NT4 Server. Do I still need to buy TI server or will TI Workstation + Universal Restore work?

 

Hello neilj,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Please note that the Acronis Universal Restore add-on option does not support Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Server, NT 4.0 Workstation, 98, or Me. Therefore, if you would like to transfer your Windows system to a different hardware I would recommend that you first prepare Windows using Microsoft System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) and then use Acronis True Image 8.0 to create the image of this system and then restore this image to the virtual computer. Please note that Sysprep permits replacing drivers only for Plug-and-Play devices (sound cards, network adapters, video cards etc.). As for system Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and mass storage device drivers, they must be identical on the source and the target computers (see Microsoft Knowledge Base, articles 302577 and 216915). Please be aware that we do not guarantee the successful transferring of your operating system to a different hardware in this case.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

If you use VMWare as a virtual machine, then there's a tool called
"P2V Assistant" (Physical to virtual).
http://www.vmware.com/products/p2v/
It does support Windows NT 4 migration.