Restoring an image to Virtual Box

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First let me say that using Virtual Box will be an entirely new experience for me and have very little knowledge of it except that it can be used to run OS’s and other software.

After reading about others here using it to run Windows 8, I d/l Virtual Box the other day and have not installed it yet but am reading the manual to familiarize myself a little more with how it works.

Currently I have Windows 7 on one drive and XP on another drive for dual boot.

What I would like to know is can I restore an XP image made with True Image to a virtual box environment on Windows 7 ??

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One problem you’ll run into is that the emulated “hardware” in a virtual machine isn’t the same as the hardware the XP image came from. The restored XP will think it’s running on a completely different computer, so you’ll at least get a bunch of those “found new hardware” balloons the first time the virtual machine tries to boot up.

The good news is the emulated hardware is mostly middle-of-the-road kind of stuff, so you should be able to find all the right drivers without too much trouble. However, the hardware changes will also most likely trigger WPA reactivation.

Note that if you have an OEM version of XP that is tied to the real computer’s bios, you’ll have trouble because the emulated bios in the virtual machine won’t match the requirement for OEM pre-activation.

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Actually dg, my XP and Windows 7 is on the same computer. Just different drives.

So, all the hardware, devices etc. are the same for both systems….

I was reading the manual and it seems there is an export and import feature that may be what I need to do.
I’m not sure if the export and import feature is the solution..

And yes, my operating systems, W7 and XP were installed with OEM disks…

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my XP and Windows 7 is on the same computer. Just different drives.

So, all the hardware, devices etc. are the same for both systems….

No, the point is a virtual machine is a different “computer”. It has its own fake (emulated) “hardware” that is rarely the same as your real hardware. For instance, Windows installed in a default VirtualBox virtual machine will think it’s running on a ICH AC97 sound card and a ICH PIIX4 disk controller, even though that may not be what your real hardware is. Open Device Mgr inside a virtual machine and you’ll see different devices than the real hardware VirtualBox is running on.

The image you create will come from your real computer, but the restore will be made to a fake computer with different (fake) hardware. The result is the same as if you were moving XP between two physical computers.

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All you can do is try it. Some imaging software doesn’t play nice with virtual hosts, unless you have a “pro” or Enterprise edition for Servers and that supports restores to dissimilar hardware.

The Import/Export feature is for backing up and restoring existing VMs. For example, I have several workstation VMs I use at work. When I recently moved to a new PC, I had to export those VMs into a template format. It’s not as simple as copying the files to another PCs. Import/Export has nothing to do with restoring an image made outside of the virtual environment.

As far as drivers, they come from installing the VirtuaBox Guest Additions after the OS is up and running. Just an FYI, if you are testing Win8 in a VirtualBox VM, the Guest Additions are not compatible.

Hope that all makes some sense.

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Thanks guys…I’m beginning to understand it better..

I am gonna try it this week and see what happens.

Like I said in my original post, this is all new to me so I will play with it and see what happens

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Banyarola

Did you ever succeed with this??

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Many of the PRO versions of imaging software offer the option to create a backup image that will be bootable in VirtualBox. Have you checked your imaging software for this option??
Michael

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