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Win7, disk imaging, vmware

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4wd:
Probably a year ago I downloaded and used a free tool from VMware that is able to take a normal PC and turn it into a virtual machine for VMware. The wizard that comes with this software really works. Would you be able to tell me which are the possibilities of conversion from the Paragon suite?-Shades (May 14, 2009, 11:06 PM)
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We were actually talking about going the other way, from a Virtual Machine -> real hardware.

As f0dder mentioned in his original post, it would allow you to set up your OS exactly how you want it and then transfer to real hardware.  You can experiment without the fear of doing an irreparable screwup that would require having to reinstall or restore an image - with a VM you could just turn it off telling it to ignore any changes made, (well in VirtualPC you can, I don't know about VMware, VirtualBox, Parallels Workstation).

I believe it will function much the same as Acronis' Universal Restore does, basically remove all reference to any installed hardware drivers and prompt you for replacements if it can't find what it wants during restore, (for IDE/SCSI/SATA devices so it can do the restore), after that, I believe, Vista (or Win7) should detect all hardware changes and install appropriate drivers from the CAB files.

But, never fear, having been convinced by a discount to purchase PDM2009Suite - the experiment continues as I try to get a recalcitrant basic Win7 install out of it's secure nesting place in VirtualPC onto a genuine 4 year old laptop :)

Actually I wasn't totally convinced by the discount, I've found over the last 2 weeks or so that I actually enjoy using Paragon products and their Rescue Media is just magic compared to Acronis' basic offering.

This is not an ad for Paragon but if anyone's interested, PM me for the link to a 30% discount until the 24th.

f0dder:
I've just tried restoring a vmware image of Win7 to my testbox, using Acronis... ~4mins both to create and restore image - which is imho slightly long, considering the .tib file is just 2.0GB and I'm storing the file across my gigabit LAN. But oh well, 4mins is acceptable.

Result BSOD: STOP ERROR 0x0000007B - iirc that's inaccessible boot device? (I verified earlier that Win7 had no trouble going from IDE0:0 to IDE1:1 in vmware, so the problem must be driver related. Burned the Win7-RC DVD and tried doing a repair, to no avail. I also flipped the BIOS settings for the SATA drive from AHCI to Compatible, since that could have been an issue (you really do want to run in AHCI mode if possible, though, so if this had worked I would've had have to look for a workaround).

Maybe the hardware config was too radically different for Win7 to cope with because there's bound to be the limit of how many hardware items you can change before copy protection kicks in.-4wd (May 13, 2009, 11:38 PM)
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I don't think this is the problem - first of all, the image isn't activated yet. Second, activation failure should result in nice usermode warning messages, not BSOD.

with a VM you could just turn it off telling it to ignore any changes made, (well in VirtualPC you can, I don't know about VMware, VirtualBox, Parallels Workstation).-4wd (May 15, 2009, 02:57 AM)
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Afaik you can't do that directly, but you can take 'disk snapshots' when you have your machine in a nice condition, and revert to a snapshot later on.

Anyway, I'm going to look into Sysprep - it might be what I'm looking for. It does, however, removes all user- and computer-specific settings and data which means I can't set up user accounts for the image. And iirc, sysprep'ed images need a configuration phase when booted... which is shorter than a full reinstall, but not as speedy-fast-cool as just an image restore. Oh, and I'm getting "A fatal error occurred wheil trying to sysprep the machine." :( - dunno if it's because of the RC, or because I vLited the system. (Or because I haven't made some necessary config files).

It would be cool if you could just remove the installed IDE controller, probably dropping chipset drivers "somewhere magical", and then have the thing just plain work...

EDIT: thinking of it, sysprep might be the best way to go after all - vmware emulates one set of hardware, so there's a bunch of specific drivers installed that you wouldn't have otherwise. Hmm.

Shades:
@4wd:
The thought behind my suggestion was that the Paragon software is not required (at least for VMware) to create a VM from a physical PC. So the Paragon software is only useful when converting the other way. To me it seems that the usefulness is kinda limited.

Having said that, what is the major advantage from the 'VM to real' conversion against a fresh install? Pre-installed software like an office suite for example? Or just because one can do it?

Above reasons are perfectly adequate and as long as you have fun with it, what\s the problem?  :Thmbsup: I'm just curious, because I have found out that it can be real lengthy crime sometimes to find and/or get the correct drivers from older hardware (from people who archived their driver CD's into oblivion).

f0dder:
Shades: my reason is that I can spend a lot of time tweaking the system in vmware and get it just the way I want it. It's less painful to do this in a vm than on physical hardware for a number of reasons. First, you can create "drive snapshots" and quickly restore those if you fsck something up - less painful than working with disk images. Second, I'll be needing at least a few reboots while setting things up, which is also less painful in a vm than normal hardware.

And yes, installed software (and all those darn settings!), together with restore speed, is a big reason for me wanting to do this project. For XP64 (and XP32 before that) I used an unattended setup that did a lot of tweaks, but imaging is faster and nicer... if the driver problem can be solved :)

f0dder:
OK, so I tried removing just about all devices from device manager, then deleting %SystemRoot%\inf\*.pnf (some cached files) - but apparently this wasn't enough (I think it's still a good idea, though, to get rid of devices that aren't going to be applicable for the physical hardware). But still getting the 0x0000007B BSOD.

So, I found this post. Replacing the HAL isn't necessary for me, but the thread has this interesting hint:
Now for the Mass Storage drivers it's more difficult. But basically comes down to: Detect the PNP-ID of the boot-device, find the correct .inf file on a driver distribution share mounted from BartPE and install the .sys, .cat files in the offline image. AND very important to import the proper entries in the CiriticalDeviceDatabase and Services section of the loaded hive so the pc will not get a bluescreen (7B error). To do this is too much to explain here in detail.
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Some more googling led me to You receive a Stop 0x0000007B error after (...) at the microsoft knowledge base. This might have the necessary information, or at least bits and pieces of it. Note that I won't be needing any special mass-storage drivers for what I'm doing, as the machine has Vista-supported chipset and all. I just need to... ummm... do... something about... the boot device PnP ID?

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