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
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
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.
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