I have found lots of guides on how to create a virtual image of a win xp or newer windows, but it eludes me how I can do that with win 2000 server. Anyone have any good input here? I was hoping to end up using virtualbox.
4 Answers
VMware Converter version 3 is supported for 2000. Then you may be able to convert from their format to a VirtualBox format.
I run plenty of 2000 VMware images but cannot remember how I made them. Too long ago and too many other servers later.
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Interesting, I am giving that a whirl. Seems it should be entirely doable to convert to vhd after such a process. Thank you.– cc0Nov 26, 2010 at 7:48
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Ok, I managed to create a VMDK backup of the win 2000 server harddrive. Then I used the 'vmdk2vhd' tool to convert it to VHD, then I loaded it in VirtualBox. It does start to boot, but it freezes before it loads the windows logo. I tried this on two different computers with different hardware, the same thing happened. I am puzzled as to what the cause could be.– cc0Nov 29, 2010 at 7:23
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I booted with the win2k cd, used recovery console to fixboot and fixmbr, no difference. Any suggestions here?– cc0Nov 29, 2010 at 8:53
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1Have you tried having a fiddle with the ACPI settings? Windows can sometimes be a little finicky about being uprooted from its original hardware.– NovexNov 29, 2010 at 11:34
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1Awesome, this worked! Just enabled IO APIC, that was all I had to do. Thank you Novex! :]– cc0Nov 29, 2010 at 13:55
You should read up on the Virtualbox documentation on Migrating Windows Machines.
On creating the LowLevel Image mentioned in the above document I would read up on Imaging your Hard Drive using dd
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The 2nd link there might be helpful, although it's going to be hard to do. It's a server located in a server room with lots of security clearances needed, so if I was to hook up an extra drive to it that would certainly take some effort. But thank you, if it comes down to that I might have to attempt it. Hopefully some other option will come up though, I do have remote access to it.– cc0Nov 25, 2010 at 14:21
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2The problem which prevents current software from working with win2k is that most tools uses Windows' Volume Snapshot feature which is present since WinXP– paceyNov 25, 2010 at 14:45
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Disk2vhd by SysInternals The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online