VMWare virtual pc- Boot error

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by GonWild, Jan 21, 2005.

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  1. GonWild

    GonWild Registered Member

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    I took an image of my xp partition, and want to test it on a vmware virtual pc.
    I restore it from over the network, and all seems fine. However, during win xp loadingscreen in the virtual pc, I get a bluescreen with some error.
    Anyone ?
     
  2. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

    Joined:
    Apr 28, 2004
    Posts:
    25,885
    Hello GonWild,

    Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

    Please accept our apologies for your inconvenience.

    Could you please do the following in order to enable mini-dumps.

    - Open Computer properties either by right clicking on My Computer icon and choosing Properties or by opening System properties in Control Panel;
    - Go to Advanced tab;
    - Press Startup and Recover Settings button;
    - Choose Small memory dump in Write debugging information box;
    - Close all the dialog windows by clicking OK buttons.

    Then please reproduce the system crash and send the mini-dumps created to support@acronis.com. This will allow us to investigate the problem thoroughly.

    Thank you.
    --
    Ilya Toytman
     
  3. jimmytop

    jimmytop Registered Member

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    Location:
    USA
    A virtual machine has different hardware than the host machine. It's no different than trying to restore an image from one system onto a different system. It doesn't work because of driver and hal and hardware conflicts.

    It's like changing the motherboard and cpu in your computer case and expecting XP to just boot right up - it won't happen.

    Even though the VM is in reality using your physical hardware, the VM has to emulate actual other hardware in order to work. Look at device manager in a VM - none of the hardware in the device list matches anything on the host machine. That's why it's called a Virtual PC.

    The behavior you are seeing when trying to restore a different systems XP partition to the VM is not unexpected.

    After you put the image on the VM, you need to do a Repair Install of Windows XP on the VM. This will reinitialize all of the XP drivers to work with the VM's emulated hardware.

    Here is the repair install instructions:
    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

    Use Method 2.

    Some other resources:
    http://www.theeldergeek.com/replace_motherboard.htm
    http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/repaxp.htm
     
  4. jimmytop

    jimmytop Registered Member

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    Posts:
    268
    Location:
    USA
    This is addressed on the vmware support site as well:

    http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/en...mFueX4mcF9zb3J0X2J5PWRmbHQmcF9wYWdlPTE*&p_li=

    "Question
    Can I make a drive image of a physical PC, and then transfer that image into a virtual machine? What are the challenges associated with this?

    Answer
    There is a reasonable chance of failure when restoring drive images where the target PC's hardware configuration is different than the original PC's hardware configuration.
    This problem applies to virtual machines as well. "
    (there's more but I snipped it, click link to read.)

    Basically it says what I'm telling you. But I would still suggest the Repair Install as I stated in my post above. Should work fine. Good luck.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2005
  5. GonWild

    GonWild Registered Member

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    Jan 21, 2005
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    jimmytop> thanx. that did the trick.
    however..xp needs to be reactivated before I can log on, and the shared networking thing in vmware doesnt work ! well... I guess thats another forum
     
  6. Tsu

    Tsu Registered Member

    Joined:
    Sep 16, 2004
    Posts:
    61
    See the VMWARE site and get VMWare P2V Assistant 2.0 if you can. Physical to Virtual conversion. Quoting from their site.

    How does VMware P2V Assistant Work?
    VMware P2V Assistant takes a snapshot of an existing physical system and transforms it into a VMware virtual machine, eliminating the need to reinstall and reconfigure complex application environments. Virtual machines created by the P2V Assistant will run on VMware ESX Server, VMware GSX Server and VMware Workstation. ​

    I've used this to take WIN Server images and run them in VMWare which is another story for a VMWare forum to reduce hardware costs i.e. 2 or 3 servers running in one can.

    http://www.vmware.com/products/vtools/p2v_features.html

    This method beats the heck out of doing a sysprep ( before ) or a repair install (after) restoring an image - any image - Acronis, Ghost etc

    Sorry for non-Acronis solution proposed in this forum.
     
  7. GonWild

    GonWild Registered Member

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    Jan 21, 2005
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    tsu> thank you!
     
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