KCB said:
Interesting question! Can a user overwrite the default XP installation
which is in XP mode? XP mode resides in a .vhd file on your Win7 hard
drive. I suppose if you could convert your existing XP install into a
.vhd file, that it _could_ work. Maybe you need to do some Googling.
You can use this, to do P2V conversion. When I tried this, it had a
tick box to correct the HAL for working within Virtual PC's single
core environment. I don't see that depicted in the pictures here now.
If the target was Hyper-V, that probably wouldn't be needed.
"Disk2vhd"
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415
I think it also copies the partition table of the disk, but only the
data from the partitions you select. The partition table will reflect
partitions which aren't there. That didn't seem to cause a problem.
VHDs also seem to have a 137GB limit (i.e don't support 48 bit LBA).
So there is a size limitation to worry about. I don't know if this
is baked into the VHD format as such, or is an artifact of the
virtual disk emulation within Virtual PC. I think I had a corruption
once, that may have been caused by this handling limit.
Also, when I tested that (not testing the same way the OP might want
to use it), the guest OS requested activation. That happens, because
the emulated hardware is different than the original native environment.
If you copy an existing WinXP that way, you'd be running two copies
of the OS at the same time.
*******
Past posters have managed to get scanners working, without resorting
to virtual machines. But if that was the only method available, one
thing to keep in mind, is how things like USB passthru work in the
virtual machine.
VirtualBox seems to work at the USB packet level. If you have a USB
scanner, you can set it to be "bound" to the guest OS. And then any
USB packets get redirected there.
Virtual PC on the other hand, seems to handle USB passthru a different
way, and supports "classes" of devices. If a device fits into one
of the USB class code standards, then it may be passed through to
the guest OS. But the support isn't quite the same thing as the
VirtualBox method, which is a form of packet redirection. I suspect
VirtualBox could even handle USB devices that don't fit into standard
classes, while Virtual PC may be a lot more selective about what it
can pass through to the guest OS.
*******
These are fun experiments to try, with no guarantee the results will
fill a need. In some cases, an alternative scanner driver (one for
another model) happens to work. Or, a third party program may be
able to access the scanner, in which case all this virtual machine
stuff can be avoided.
Paul
