Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Win7, disk imaging, vmware

<< < (5/6) > >>

Carol Haynes:
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?
-Shades (May 15, 2009, 01:46 PM)
--- End quote ---

Even if you do get it to work you won't avoid activation issues in software that requires activation as the hardware machine ID will have changed significantly.

I have tried this in the past with Acronis Universal Restore and haven't had much luck - even though the product is sold specifically for this kind of thing.

Probably quicker (and with a better, more consistent outcome) to install from scratch on the hardware and then image a clean copy. At least you know what you have then and you don't inherit PITA issues in a months time that aren't instantly apparent.

4wd:
Update: Migration of Windows 7 from VirtualPC to real hardware.

Status:      

I did it!!!!

The VM is just VirtualPC 2007 running an Athlon 7750 BE, running Windows 7 x86 Ultimate fresh install, (not activated).
The 'sacrificial PC' is one I just built for someone: E5300, 4GB, Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L, Gigabyte 8400GS and 320GB SATA HDD.

I installed Paragon Disk Backup 9 Personal Edition into the VM this time, (I was using a Rescue Media ISO image previously and booting the VM off of it - it shouldn't have made any difference but wtf), I made a full hard disk image of the VM drive, (basic install of W7 + PDB9PE), to another VM drive.  Then copied it to an external 2.5" and booted the sacrificial PC off of the PDB9PE Rescue Media CD.

I restored the image using the 'Restore to different hardware' option, when it had finished I entered Safe Boot, it detected and installed drivers for the hardware and then restarted.............

..........and came up running  :D

Device Manager shows no unknown devices and all the installed ones are correctly identified.

I think the reason I wasn't having much luck with the laptop is that I was just trying to restore the boot partition without screwing up a data partition - I'll have another look at this now I know it's definitely possible.

BTW, a post by someone on Wilders quoting Paragon support says that the 'Adaptive Restore' feature actually supports XP, 2003, 2008, Vista, (basically everything since XP), and Win7 was coming - I think I can say it's here :)

EDIT: The restoration took less than 10 minutes from Power On to Win 7 up and running.  A bit quicker than a full install from scratch.

Stoic Joker:
Probably quicker (and with a better, more consistent outcome) to install from scratch on the hardware and then image a clean copy. At least you know what you have then and you don't inherit PITA issues in a months time that aren't instantly apparent.
-Carol Haynes (May 15, 2009, 05:51 PM)
--- End quote ---

This also affords one the opportunity to rethink the tweaks that are being used and helps in remembering which tweaks were done why. I have had one tweak conflict with another (quite transparently) creating a secondary issue that took weeks to track down. ...So manually recreating a critical configuration to keep what was done and why straight in my head I look at as a good thing.

I do use various scripts to speed up the process, but I make a point of documenting everything so I know what the script will do, and why I wanted it done (at the time).

f0dder:
Even if you do get it to work you won't avoid activation issues in software that requires activation as the hardware machine ID will have changed significantly.-Carol Haynes (May 15, 2009, 05:51 PM)
--- End quote ---
Not much of a problem for me, since I (fortunately) have very little software is hardware-tied. I do worry about BattleField 2142, though, as it was a major bother getting to work in the first place.

I have tried this in the past with Acronis Universal Restore and haven't had much luck - even though the product is sold specifically for this kind of thing.-Carol Haynes (May 15, 2009, 05:51 PM)
--- End quote ---
:/

Probably quicker (and with a better, more consistent outcome) to install from scratch on the hardware and then image a clean copy. At least you know what you have then and you don't inherit PITA issues in a months time that aren't instantly apparent.-Carol Haynes (May 15, 2009, 05:51 PM)
--- End quote ---
I wonder if this kind of procedure causes that kind of trouble... apart from mass storage driver for your boot device, Windows is pretty good at detecting + installing hardware.

The things that have screwed me over have been being a bit overzealous with nLite or vLite, and the trouble from that can indeed show up several weeks after an install. Trick? Be a bit more conservative, especially wrt. removing minor size-impact stuff like services.

4wd:
Just tried restoring an activated Win7 from the VM to real hardware.  Either Win7 reverts to unactivated due to the hardware changes or PDB9PE removes the relevant file/registry entry.

Re-activation worked without a problem which seems to imply the keys they're giving out at the moment are either time-limited VLKs or they distinguish a VM as being non-consequential and allow it.

EDIT: This time I didn't boot into Safe Mode first and there was no problem, W7 installed drivers and then asked for a Restart.

Now to get it into my old laptop  >:D

Even if you do get it to work you won't avoid activation issues in software that requires activation as the hardware machine ID will have changed significantly.-Carol Haynes (May 15, 2009, 05:51 PM)
--- End quote ---
Not much of a problem for me, since I (fortunately) have very little software is hardware-tied.-f0dder (May 16, 2009, 11:27 AM)
--- End quote ---

Same here, the only software I have besides Windows that is 'locked' to the hardware is DaemonTools Pro Advanced - and they at least allow the users themselves to revoke the license on one machine to install it on another, something MS could learn from.

Update: It seems no matter what I try I can't get from a VM to my old laptop, (P4 2.4GHz SKT478 ATI chipset, 768MB, 40GB HDD), so I guess I'll class that as a flop.

Now to try a VM to my real hardware....after a full OS backup or two.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page