Virtualised WinVista Ult HDD will not boot in VPC2007 on Win7 64 Ult host

[JdeP]

Hi everyone, have this minor issue with new Win7 64bit Ultimate installation.
The workstation on which Win7 has been newly installed used to run my principal working system running on Vista Ultimate SP2.
I had 18 months of installation and configuration on the 'old' machine.
Rather than spend weeks reinstalling and reconfiguring all the original software I decided to 'virtualise' the 'old' HDD using Disk2 VHD software, and then just to run my 'old' vista machine as it used to be but as a virtual machine on the new Win7 host.
Cracking idea!!
Trouble is, 'e don' work!
The Vista virtual machine begins the boot process with no problem all at all, drives are detected, but then it gets to the point where the Vista OS would normally begin its boot sequence, and everything comes to a grinding halt. Just a black window with no further activity.

It seemed such a good idea at the time.

Any Virtual Gurus out there have any ideas, your advice would be appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

JdeP


PS. My XP.vhd boots and runs perfectly in the Win7 host VPC 2007 combo.

 

[catilley1092]

JdeP, welcome to the forum! There is a newer VM from Microsoft that you can tryout, Windows Virtual PC. Normally, it's used with XP Mode (Win 7 Pro & up). But you can install other OS's on it, I had Win 2K Pro on the one that I had for a while. I was into this "virtual" deal at one time, although only to help others on this forum. My programs/hardware runs fine w/o it. But for those who needs VM's to run older programs/hardware, it's a powerful tool to have. Sun also makes a good free one, Virtual Box. It was recently updated. But as far as taking a previous install and virtualizing it, that's a new one for me. I've always started from scratch. But what you may want to try is backing up what you have, most likely, you've already done so. Then install your OS into your VM and try to restore your files that way. It's probably something you're going to have to play around with to get it right. What I'd like to tell you to do is, if you have the disc image laying around with everything on it, install the VM as one that expands and do the image restore, but most likely, you don't want a VM to take that much space on your drive. Because the entire partition is restored to disc, not just your files, which is normally much smaller than the partition. You're just going to have to play around with it. Best of luck to you, and I hope that your project ends up working for you.