Virtualizing C2Q Win XP box under Win 10 Pro

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Stereodude

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Does anyone know of a good guide on how to take my existing Core2 Quad Q6600 PC and make an image from it that I can then run at a VM under Windows 10 Pro? Bonus points if I don't have to buy any software and can use free tools.

I messed around with it before a little but the image of the machine was a BSOD fest when I would try to boot it. I think I was using VirtualBox. I guess the image has to be altered so it will re-detect the virtualized hardware and load the appropriate drivers for it instead of trying to use the existing drivers for the old physical hardware, but it wasn't obvious how to do that.
 
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CougTek

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Unless it's changed during the past year, the VPlayer is free for personal use, but you need the workstation version to create the VM.

Virtualbox is free.
 
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CougTek said:
Unless it's changed during the past year, the VPlayer is free for personal use, but you need the workstation version to create the VM.

Virtualbox is free.
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Doesn't vCenter Converter make the VM? Or is that just the image and something else has to be done to it before it can be run with the player?

I told the vCenter Converter to make whatever it's output is called for Player 7. :scratch:
 
Handruin

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CougTek said:
Unless it's changed during the past year, the VPlayer is free for personal use, but you need the workstation version to create the VM.

Virtualbox is free.
Click to expand...

This was my understanding as well that you needed workstation to create the VM. Use the trial version of Workstation Pro to create the initial image. I forgot about the VMware player if you just want to play, but if you want to make any changes it might be worth either using Workstaion if you want to pay for it or convert to Virtualbox.
 
Handruin

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Neat. I wasn't aware Microsoft had a converter tool. Let us know how it goes, I've not done much with Hyper-V.
 
Handruin

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Stereodude said:
Well, I've got my .vmx and two vmdk files. However, it seems that is not actually a VM yet. Is that correct?
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Those can often times be all that is needed to make a VM functional. The .vmx file usually has configuration details inside (if you open with a text editor, you can see the parameters defined like Memory, CPU, etc) and the vmdk files typically represent the backing storage for the system that has been virtualized and will present as hard drives once the VM is booted. If you open the .vmx file in VMware player or VMware workstation it may boot just fine. I'm uncertain if Hyper-V will simply boot the VM with those files. It may, I just don't know.
 
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Handruin said:
Those can often times be all that is needed to make a VM functional. The .vmx file usually has configuration details inside (if you open with a text editor) and the vmdk files typically represent the backing storage for the system that has been virtualized and will present as hard drives once the VM is booted. If you open the .vmx file in VMware player or VMware workstation it may boot just fine. I'm uncertain if Hyper-V will simply boot the VM with those files. It may, I just don't know.
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FWIW, VMware Workstation 12 Player booted it just fine.

I should probably move the drive images to my local machine instead of running them over my 1Gb network.
 
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That's good news. Did the conversion add in the VMware tools to the virtualized OS? There would be an icon in the system tray if it did. If not, it may be worth installing them if you decide to stay with a VMware product. If not VMware, Virtualbox has their own tool set and I'm guessing Hyper-V may also. They usually help the user GUI experience for things like copy & pasting files, or simply releasing the mouse from the active screen without having to use ctrl + alt on the keyboard. Some also offers improved driver support and better date/time management.
 
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Handruin said:
That's good news. Did the conversion add in the VMware tools to the virtualized OS? There would be an icon in the system tray if it did. If not, it may be worth installing them if you decide to stay with a VMware product. If not VMware, Virtualbox has their own tool set and I'm guessing Hyper-V may also. They usually help the user GUI experience for things like copy & pasting files, or simply releasing the mouse from the active screen without having to use ctrl + alt on the keyboard. Some also offers improved driver support and better date/time management.
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It prompted me to install VMware tools in the virtualized OS. The mouse was basically unusable without them. I let it.

So what's the real downside of sticking with Player? What can't it do if I just want to occasionally do something in the virtualized machine?
 
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Handruin said:
I don't think it used to allow changing resource values like RAM size, CPU count, storage size, etc but it may now allow that.
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You can definitely do that now with Player.

There is a FAQ over here that has a little more details on the differences. Some features like snapshots, cloning, and remote management features are not available.
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Doesn't seem like things I need. However, I guess I'll need to play around with it some before I know what I do or don't need.
 
mubs

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Didn't read the whole thread. I used VMWare Converter to convert my W7 live install to a VMWare Player-compatible VM. About 6-8 months ago. Both are free downloads (registration required) at VMWare.

Be aware though that as soon as you start it up, Windows will ask for a new key since it assumes the hw has changed.
 
Howell

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I used converter and ran the vmdk under virtualbox I wanted the ability to create and run more VMs. I threw away the companion vmx and rebuilt it under vb.
 
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mubs said:
Both are free downloads (registration required) at VMWare.
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I downloaded the converter from another download site which didn't require registration. No registration was required for the player download from VMware, but it asks for an e-mail address either during the install process or the first time you start it. I don't recall which.

Howell said:
I used converter and ran the vmdk under virtualbox I wanted the ability to create and run more VMs. I threw away the companion vmx and rebuilt it under vb.
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You wanted to run them concurrently? My Nikon film/slide slide scanner only works properly under XP. Apparently it will also sort of work under the 32-bit versions of newer OS's. People have reported varying levels of success. Under the 64-bit flavors you're basically on your own. I haven't used the scanner in years, but I've found myself booting the XP machine every so often to do something that wasn't installed or setup on another PC because it's quicker to start the machine than try to get the program(s) working under Windows 10. If the hardware dies I don't want to be in a lurch, though I realize I could reinstall XP clean to a VM.
 
timwhit

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VirtualBox can take snapshots, which you won't be able to do with VMWare Player. There's most likely some other features that are missing that I can't think of right now.

I worked from a VM for about 13 months, I would definitely not use Player for that type of usage.
 
mubs

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Stereodude said:
My Nikon film/slide slide scanner only works properly under XP.
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Ha! Interesting, because my Epson scanner (paper/film) only works in XP. I used in in W7 64, then now in W10 64, inside an XP VM. There are posts I made earlier about trying to solve this issue when I first moved to W7.

There is, BTW, 3rd party sw that will work with almost any scanner in any OS, and is supposed to be much better that manufacturer's sw. I forget the name. Google for your scanner name and W10 to find it.

I also run a W98 VM to use calendar sw made in 1992, that, believe it or not, still works perfectly.
 
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Handruin said:
I haven't tried this, but this article describes converting VMs in either direction be it VMware > Virtualbox or vice vs.
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I'm trying this process. Exporting it to export a .ovf now. It sure is slow... The VM is on a SSD, a Samsung 850 Pro, and the disk is at 100% disk time, but it's only reading about 25MB/sec. It's not CPU limited either. It must be using very inefficient access patterns.

The general rule of thumb for VMs is for best performance to have them on their own SSD right? (Not one the host is running from or other programs)
 
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Stereodude said:
I'm trying this process. Exporting it to export a .ovf now. It sure is slow... The VM is on a SSD, a Samsung 850 Pro, and the disk is at 100% disk time, but it's only reading about 25MB/sec. It's not CPU limited either. It must be using very inefficient access patterns.

The general rule of thumb for VMs is for best performance to have them on their own SSD right? (Not one the host is running from or other programs)
Click to expand...

It's hard to say what's going on with the file transfer. They could be doing small block IO (4k maybe?) that's doing sync writes which might be part of the problem. If this was under Linux you could run iostat to see what the metrics looked like but I don't think Windows has the kind of granularity.

Separating their storage on to different drives certainly won't hurt. If you're not going to be using this VM much it could easily live on a shared SSD. Like most things it really depends on what you're doing with it and what amount of the activity is biased towards storage IO. In my ESXi servers I have one or two Samsung SV843 SSD drives that I share will all my VMs. Given their enterprise nature they do a decent job with random IO so I've had little issue with performance. My VMs also don't do a lot of storage IO so that helps.
 
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Handruin said:
It's hard to say what's going on with the file transfer. They could be doing small block IO (4k maybe?) that's doing sync writes which might be part of the problem. If this was under Linux you could run iostat to see what the metrics looked like but I don't think Windows has the kind of granularity.

Separating their storage on to different drives certainly won't hurt. If you're not going to be using this VM much it could easily live on a shared SSD. Like most things it really depends on what you're doing with it and what amount of the activity is biased towards storage IO. In my ESXi servers I have one or two Samsung SV843 SSD drives that I share will all my VMs. Given their enterprise nature they do a decent job with random IO so I've had little issue with performance. My VMs also don't do a lot of storage IO so that helps.
Click to expand...
It finished. Just took longer than I would have expected. I got it imported into VirtualBox. I had to uninstall the VMware tools from the host system and install VirtualBox Guest Additions instead. Overall, from an immediate standpoint I don't see a ton of difference between using Player and VirtualBox. VirtualBox does give a little more control over the virtual hardware in terms of how it appears to be to the guest system though.
 
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Howell said:
I am unclear what you are using the pronoun to refer to. I ran the converted vmdk under Virtualbox alongside VMs created in VB. Light loads.
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Them, as in the VMs. Isn't that a limitation of Player? It can't run two VMs at the same time?
 
Bozo

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I ave been using VMWare Player and Converter for a long time. You can run multiple VMs if you have enough memory and CPU power. Converter will convert some backup program files to VMWare and other virtual images to VMWare.
 
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