Author Topic: Paragon Virtualization Manager 2010 (Read 29086 times)

tinjaw · « **on:** February 07, 2010, 11:34 AM »

I just learned about Paragon's Virtualization Manager 2010 Personal the other day. It looks like it could be useful. I would use it on Windows 7 to go between my Win7 on bare iron, my Sun VirtualBox VMs, and my Microsoft Virtual PC images. I don't have VMware Workstation, but it would be nice to be able to convert VMware images I get in the wild to VirtualBox images.

Anybody have any experience with this product?

nudone · « **Reply #1 on:** February 08, 2010, 06:06 AM »

hmm, no free trial available to download. it's tempting to just buy it and give it a try.

i think f0dder wanted something that could convert a virtual machine into a real working system - this looks like the perfect software to do it. maybe he's tested it already.

f0dder · « **Reply #2 on:** February 08, 2010, 07:24 AM »

maybe he's tested it already.
-nudone (February 08, 2010, 06:06 AM)

Nope, but it looks like it might be worth testing - I indeed want v2p

edit: hmm, no trial available? $30 is pretty cheap if it works, but if it doesn't do v2p properly, $30 is too much cash to basically throw out of the window.

nudone · « **Reply #3 on:** February 08, 2010, 08:19 AM »

i wonder if not offering a trial means there's something to worry about. i suppose a trial version would be too easy to abuse, i.e. convert a virtual machine and don't bother using the software ever again.

nudone · « **Reply #4 on:** February 08, 2010, 10:43 AM »

f0dder, i think you are the best man to test out the software so i'll forward you the correct amount of Cody DC credits to cover the cost of purchasing the program. all i ask in return is that you give the program a good going over and let us all know about it (which i'm sure you'd do anyway).

let me know if you agree.

tinjaw can have the DC credits too - i don't mind "donating" this software for you both to try.

Curt · « **Reply #5 on:** February 08, 2010, 11:19 AM »

????

* 30 days money back guarantee.

xtabber · « **Reply #6 on:** February 08, 2010, 12:25 PM »

This is also included as part of the Paragon Backup & Restore 10 Suite, which does have a free trial.
http://www.paragon-s...ftware.com/home/brs/

nudone · « **Reply #7 on:** February 09, 2010, 02:40 AM »

nice find, but...

reading the pdf datasheet for the "paragon backup and restore 10 suite" it doesn't look like it will do v2p - which is the most interesting feature about the paragon virtualization manager 10. so, at the moment, it still looks like the full product needs to be paid for before we can really learn anything about it.

i'd buy it myself but i haven't the time to play around with it at the moment.

tinjaw · « **Reply #8 on:** February 13, 2010, 10:49 AM »

Just showed up in my email inbox: special offer for 30% off on this product. That brings it down to $19.99. I made the purchase. I will try to get my first impressions up ASAP.

f0dder · « **Reply #9 on:** February 13, 2010, 11:55 AM »

Just showed up in my email inbox: special offer for 30% off on this product. That brings it down to $19.99. I made the purchase. I will try to get my first impressions up ASAP.
-tinjaw (February 13, 2010, 10:49 AM)

Any chance of other people getting a discount like that? I've been wanting to get Win7 on my laptop the coming week, and I'd definitely like to do the initial setup in VM, it's so much more enjoyable not having to reboot all the time (especially since I want a vLited install... which is even more risky than it was with Vista :/ ).

tinjaw · « **Reply #10 on:** February 13, 2010, 01:35 PM »

It looks like if you have purchased software from Paragon before (maybe needs to be via Cleverbridge) you will get an email.

Paragon Virtualization Manager 2010

4wd · « **Reply #11 on:** February 13, 2010, 05:18 PM »

Any chance of other people getting a discount like that? I've been wanting to get Win7 on my laptop the coming week, and I'd definitely like to do the initial setup in VM, it's so much more enjoyable not having to reboot all the time (especially since I want a vLited install... which is even more risky than it was with Vista :/ ).
-f0dder (February 13, 2010, 11:55 AM)

I'll probably end up with an email soon then.

GAOTD had Paragon Virtualization Manager 2009 Personal available a while back, (October), the registration page is still up.

You could try registering and using the links provided in post #3 here download the msi packages.

I'm not sure if v2009 handles W7 but it can't hurt to try.

f0dder · « **Reply #12 on:** February 13, 2010, 05:32 PM »

I'm not sure if v2009 handles W7 but it can't hurt to try.
-4wd (February 13, 2010, 05:18 PM)

And just as important: does it handle v2p? I'd say there's a bigger chance of 2009 supporting (if not officially) Win7 but failing at v2p, since it's apparently a feature that's hard to do right...

4wd · « **Reply #13 on:** February 13, 2010, 06:07 PM »

I'm not sure if v2009 handles W7 but it can't hurt to try.
-4wd (February 13, 2010, 05:18 PM)
And just as important: does it handle v2p? I'd say there's a bigger chance of 2009 supporting (if not officially) Win7 but failing at v2p, since it's apparently a feature that's hard to do right...
-f0dder (February 13, 2010, 05:32 PM)

hmm, it supports W7 x86/x64 but I'm not sure it does V2P - here's the original GAOTD page.

I think the Virtualization Manager is a slightly tweaked repackaged version of Paragon's Adaptive Restore feature.

Still, at a cost of only a few bits and bytes, what have you got to lose

nudone · « **Reply #14 on:** February 13, 2010, 06:09 PM »

i've seen the 2009 version and i couldn't see any v2p in it.

4wd · « **Reply #15 on:** February 13, 2010, 06:28 PM »

i've seen the 2009 version and i couldn't see any v2p in it.
-nudone (February 13, 2010, 06:09 PM)

You're right, been a while since I used it.

Paragon Virtualization Manager 2010

f0dder · « **Reply #16 on:** February 18, 2010, 07:13 PM »

Win7-RC started bitching about 11 days/whatever left until it's gonna nuke itself, so I bit the bullet and purchased PVM 2010, with the intent of getting a decent RTM install in vmware and v2p'ing when done. I'll start with some testing, and report progress here. So far, it strikes me that the WinPE boot ISO mentions P2V but not V2P...

f0dder · « **Reply #17 on:** February 19, 2010, 06:16 AM »

Eureka!

Did a p2v test last night, transferring my current workstation to vmware. Took a bit getting it to work, but that wasn't PVM2010's fault - I attribute it to the fact I was doing the operation at 3am. I forgot to include the Win7 Boot Config Data partition, so obviously the system wasn't bootable; marking the partition as active and running the "fix problems" thing from the Win7 install CD twice made the virtualized system bootable, though. Wasn't super usable, but that's because of the quirky way I have %docs% and %temp% set up on my workstation. Verdict: p2v was a success!

Today I brewed a strong can of coffee and set out to test v2p. Created a vmware install of Win7-x64, using a version 6.0 disk format rather than 6.5 (not sure if this is necessary, but I noticed that for yesterday's p2v, PVM2010 created a 6.0 format - better be on the safe side). Did a few minor tweaks after install, nothing major; basically I wanted to be able to tell whether v2p was going to nuke my user settings (Microsoft's sysprep does that). Realized my external USB enclosure was fried and my largest usb flash is 8gig, so I had to copy the vmware disk image to my fileserver; thanks doyc for gigabit lan.

Proceeded to burn the WinPE based PVM2010 recovery/advanced-stuff ISO image, and booted my test machine from it. Entered the "Full Scale Launcher", connected my virtual disk image (networking worked out of the box, <3 WinPE), nuked the existing partitions on my testbox and did a "Copy Disk" operation. ~12 minutes and ~8 gigabytes later the copying was done and I disconnected the virtual disk. Finished the operation by running the "P2P Adjust" wizard (without injecting any new drivers), rebooted the system and crossed my fingers.

Lo and behold, the system booted. Started doing a checkdisk + reboot (probably a normal procedure after restoring an image), and then entered a "preparing your computer for the first time" screen. "Oh great", I thought, "it's probably sysprepped and will have wiped user accounts clean". But nope, after this preparation it booted into the customized user account just like I had hoped.

Verdict: v2p seems to work

This is going to be so comfortable for doing new OS installs... get everything right in vmware, from the comfort of your existing & smoothly working OS, without suffering reboots of the physical machine, or "oh gosh, I screwed up, reinstall time", along with the benefits of vmware snapshots and all that jazz. When satisfied, you have a quick image restore (rather than installing OS + apps and multiple reboots) and a superfast p2p-adjust operation, and you're good to go.

I'll do a more comprehensive test today, it's time to upgrade my laptop from Vista-x64 to Win7-x64. If that goes smoothly, I'll progress to getting a vLite tweaked version onto my workstation, before the Win7 RC I'm currently running expires

nudone · « **Reply #18 on:** February 19, 2010, 06:59 AM »

an exciting read, and great news. fingers crossed that no complications appear later - or none that will make the v2p process completely unusable.

f0dder · « **Reply #19 on:** February 19, 2010, 07:10 AM »

an exciting read, and great news. fingers crossed that no complications appear later - or none that will make the v2p process completely unusable.
-nudone (February 19, 2010, 06:59 AM)

Yeah, me too

I think that any potential problems would manifest very quickly through BSODs, the most likely one being INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE - but that's what the "p2p adjust" is for. The WinPE disc even has an option to fix the machine SID, but apparently that's irrelevant. I think the road to success involves not installing other drivers (going to try things like MagicDisc and a ramdrive, though!) and not activating windows in the vm (you have a 30-day grace period while doing the install, so why bother?

).

tinjaw · « **Reply #20 on:** February 19, 2010, 07:59 AM »

This is good news. I will probably be playing with my purchased copy this weekend. I hope I have as much success as you.

4wd · « **Reply #21 on:** February 19, 2010, 07:37 PM »

... I'll progress to getting a vLite tweaked version onto my workstation, before the Win7 RC I'm currently running expires
-f0dder (February 19, 2010, 06:16 AM)

I'd love to know what things you end up 'tweaking' out of W7x64 so I can tweak my version, (my efforts using one of the posts in MSFN kind of nuked it

).

I'm now running it as my primary system since the x86 version is crippled by the arbitrary memory limitation - it's really annoying not being able to Task Switch out of a game without it crashing.

nudone · « **Reply #22 on:** February 20, 2010, 03:38 AM »

Just showed up in my email inbox: special offer for 30% off on this product. That brings it down to $19.99. I made the purchase. I will try to get my first impressions up ASAP.
-tinjaw (February 13, 2010, 10:49 AM)

just received this same email this morning. it says the offer is for "existing customers" which i must be simply because i've registered for their free software.

i shall test out the offer later and see if the discount works for me. if so, then it looks like it might be a good idea for people to just register with paragon - they'll then reward you with nice discounts via email newsletters.

nudone · « **Reply #23 on:** February 20, 2010, 08:40 AM »

it looks like the offer has little to do with being a previous customer so i'll post the link for the discount here: https://www.cleverbr...m/80/uurl-epnvvaon37

you get a third off so it's $19.95 instead of $29.95

offer ends 28th February 2010.

(i've bought it. not used it yet.)

tinjaw · « **Reply #24 on:** February 20, 2010, 09:48 AM »

My plan was to play with this this weekend at my leisure. Well, plans changed. My game machine has been blue screening while left overnight during the past week or so. When I go to shutdown that computer it just sits at the shutting down screen. About 2 days ago plugged in a second USB keyboard and it didn't work. Then I notices my existing keyboard didn't work, nor the exisiting USB mouse. After rebooting several time, even with all my USB devices removed, the USB ports didn't work. The USB ports show up in device manager without errors, but when I plug in any USB device Windows reports, after a short delay, that they device is not functioning properly. I was hoping it was "simply" a O/S issue, but booting to a different windows image on that same computer proved that it is a hardware issue.

So I have a game computer without any working USB ports. Don't think the motherboard is under warranty, but I'll worry about that later. Fortunately the PS/2 ports still function, so I can attach a keyboard and a mouse.

The play is to virtualize the computer (which I won't really use in that state because it is my game machine) and then restore it to a physical machine after I replace the motherboard.

Please eat a plate of spaghetti and meatballs for me today in a sacrifice toward good luck.