BSOD trying to migrate Windows XP from a physical to a virtual machine
- by pauldoo
I am attempting to migrate a Windows XP Home installation from a physical machine to a virtual machine. The physical machine has two hard disks; the first is 250GB containing the "C:", the second is 1TB containing "D:". I'd like to create a new virtual machine stored on the D:, which is a copy of the Windows XP Home installation that is currently on the C:.
(This will leave the 250GB drive clear for me to install a fresh copy of Windows 7, and still be able to access the old XP installation if necessary.)
The first method I tried was to follow the instructions here: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows
I booted up from an Ubuntu Live CD in order to execute the Linux commands whilst the Windows system wasn't running.
With this method the virtual machine would always blue screen on startup with a "STOP 0x0000007B" message. The instructions above say to try a "repair install" using the Windows XP disc. Unfortunately for me my XP disc is scratched and will not boot so I was unable to try a repair install.
The second method I tried was to use "VMWare Converter Standalone Client". This tool executed without any errors, but again produced a virtual machine that blue screens on startup with the same "STOP" message.
Are there any other methods to move the Windows XP installation into a virtual machine?
I think next I will try some more manual process to create the cloned virtual machine. I think I will try installing a fresh copy of Windows XP to a virtual machine, then once that is booting OK I will ntfsclone the source C: partition over the top. Perhaps this will fix the booting problems if the issue is related to the MBR or partition table in some way.
