MS Virtual PC 2007

I am a long time user of True Image which saved me from disasters many times!
I am currently using version 9.
I plan to have a look at Vista RC1. However I don't want to abandon XP for now mainly because a number of my devices are still not supported. I was thinking to use MS Virtual PC 2007 to create a virtual PC for my current XPhome als a guest of the host PC under Vista. (Unfortunately I cannot run XPhome as host because that is not supported by Virtual PC 2007). Of course I have an Image of the XPhome installation.
My question is can I 'restore' an Image in a 'empty' guest Virtual PC under Virtual PC 2007?

 

Hi,

You'll need Acronis with the Universal Restore Plugin, and it should be ok.
VirtualPC as Virtual Server uses standard drivers/hardware, so your windows should just boot up fine after Universal Restor'ing it.

Beware of Windows Activation that will bug you with the hardware being changed.

Good test,

Jaycee

 

I also am not alble to get True Image within Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 or Virtual Server 2005 to read it's backup files.

Unfortunately Acronis True Image Workstation 9.1 doesn't seem able to read it's own .tlb backup files under Microsoft Virtual PC 2004, or under Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Enterprise. The backup to restore has been spanned to 4.3gb chunks, but all 9 chunks are present in a single ISO mounted as a disk drive.

I have placed all 9 chunks on a single ISO prepared with Roxio, for ease of mounting as a CDROM within Microsoft Virtual PC, or Microsoft Virtual Server.


* ATIW when booted on a host machine, it can properly read these .TLB files from an external 500GB Mybook USB drive, or from the ISO image mounted with Virtual CD Rom Control Panel. It recognizes them as multipart, recognizes the last, and properly asks for password, and can browse the files within.
* ATIW within Virtual environment knows the first .tlb is part of a multipart set, but it doesn't recognize the 9th file as the final one. It just says it is corrupt.
** First file: "This is not the last created volume of the backup arcive. Please insert the last created volume to start woking with this archive."
** 9th (last) file: "The selected file is not an Acronis True Image Workstation archive"
* ATIW within virtual environment doesn't recognize the backup files as password protected.
* When trying to get to the files placed on a network share on another Win XP Pro, ATIW within Virtual environment asks for a username and password to look at the share folder, but admins username and password (only user on the machine) isn't accepted.

 

I've had great success dealing with virtual machines in both VMware Workstation and Microsoft Virtual PC2004 using BartPE. I have created BartPE plugins for both programs. My plugin for VMware installs VMware Tools in BartPE. My plugin for VPC 2004 installs VMAdditions in BartPE. I also include my TI plugin. You can download these plugins from my website.

All you need to do is boot the VM using your BartPE ISO. Then run TI. It should see images stored anywhere you have them. The VMware Tools and VMAdditions plugins provide all the drivers you will need to see any virtual disks, network shares, shared folders on physical disks and even VMware SCSI disks. To see network shares under BartPE, you need to run PENetConfig and start file sharing. Then map a network drive in any machine running on the network. After that, all network shares should be visible. If you use a Workstation or Server version of my TI plugin, Universal Restore can be included. This allows you to use an image of a physical machine as well. P2V restores work well this way. You can restore a physical image to new VM with empty disks.

I'm working on a plugin for VMAdditions with Virtual PC 2007 beta, but so far I can't get mouse pointer integration to work. I have had some luck booting a 2007 VM using a BartPE ISO that includes the VMAdditions plugin for 2004.