Windows 10: Create VM from physical machine

My machine has a non-clean install of win 10, which I have been using for months. I would like to do a clean install of windows 10, but I don't want to be down for days getting everything setup. So I figured I would run it in a VM on the newly installed OS while I set things up on new machine.

I used disk2vhd to create VHDX files from my c and d drive (users folder on d). I created a VM and added the disks. But hypervisor won't recogize the disk as bootable.

I am thinking this is because my host uses UEFI, so the VHDX's were created with a VHDX instead of mbr? I have tried booting the VM using the window install disk to do bootred /rebuildbcd, but the command fails, I am guessing because it doesn't work on UEFI disks?

Any suggestsions?

:)

 

port win 10 on local vm

- Bought a refurbished machine with win 10 + digital entitlement (most probably after win 8 upgrade)

- Created a vm via vmware as "image" of the physical system

- The vm win10 guest seemed to have no activation problems on win10 host

Problems come when launching the vm on linux host (same physical machine): the win10 guest is not able to activate. Besides this causes a bunch of key/mouse etc.. driver unsolvable problems.

All this was pretty easy with pid oem licences (e.g. w7). How can that be solved, if it could?

Thanks for reading

P

 

Windows 10 Key's in VHD ?

I created a brand new Windows 10 Pro machine with the intent of installing Hyper-V to create 3 Virtual Machines on the Windows 10 Pro physical machine.

I did a clean install of Pro on the physical machine, and installed Hyper-V with no issues. Being new to Hyper-V and virtualization, I did however bumble around in the creation of VMs, having to delete several times until I finally got a configuration that
would work for me. Sadly though, windows will not allow me to activate throwing the already used key code. I have two brand new copies of Windows 10 Home I am using along with a copy of Windows 8.1 which came with the physical machine. I did a clean install
of the physical with a store bought Windows 10 Pro ... so my three VMs were going to run Windows Home, Windows Home, Windows 8.1.

I am not sure if because of the way I created virtual disks and then deleted VM configurations from Hyper-V to start over somehow the keys are tied to a VHD file that is no longer being used ? The machine I created that I like I tried all three key's and
activation failed. I have one other VM running but was going to remove that one after I got another one running that mirrors the one I like. Anyway how can I tell where my keys are being tied up ? I paid for three key numbers so not sure what I am doing
wrong.

Edit: The first two VMs I created were done using the USB stick method. I deleted those two VMs and created a third using the same USB stick method to install guest OS. I have that one still running. I created a second using the ISO file method. So
I have two running VMs with one activated, the other not activated and a third yet to be created. So out of three keys I have used them all up and have one activated VM.

 

By default Hyper-V creates a new vm as Generation 1 (BIOS / MBR). If your vhd file is UEFI /GPT, you need to set the new vm as Generation 2 (UEFI).

See Part Four, step 4.4 in this tutorial: Hyper-V virtualization - Setup and Use in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

 

I thought I had created a Gen 2 VM (coincidence, didn't know at the time), and that is what I was having trouble with on with the VHDX disks.

But I just redid the images and made .VHD files, then specifcally made a gen 1 VM. That worked, but man is it slowed compared to Gen2 VM's I have made. But could be because the vhd files on an IDE, and there some services running that I don't normally run on a VM.

Would you expect a gen 2 setup to be faster than a gen1? Or is it mainly just a feature set change?

 

If you plan ahead, meaning have your drivers downloaded and ready on a flash drive, it doesn't take days to do a clean install plus configuration. You can do it all in as little as 2 hours.

 

A VM generally won't require as many if any device drivers as a rule depending on circumstances. The VM created from the upgrade install you saw will have already seen all of the necessary drivers installed by this time. The Clean install will in most case generally see the drivers needed downloaded during the installation itself. On some things however a manual check on an older hardware may requite a look at 8.1 drivers instead from the manufacturer's support site.

Found that out fast the long time discontinued tv tuner card where I went with the update for a entirely different PCIe instead o PCI model card and simply tossed on the drivers/application for that to see working results. But for something older and extra you would want to check ahead of time for any available 8.1 if not 10 updates as DeaconFrost suggested to be prepped just in case the 10 installer has a problem locating the correct update when going to see the Clean Install take place.

Meanwhile the attempt here to see the C on the main run as a VM wouldn't work due to size! From the 1tb host drive the tool produced a 703gb VHDX file! while it fit on the second storage drive it would simply take up too much drive space for that project. Plus I had to get two of the other three 10 VMs running to see those updated. 10 Home is on the second pc there now seeing the 14271 finally going on the main host drive's Insider installs there without logging into an MS account! The updated build was simply found waiting to go on!

 

Hi there
If you don't mind using vmware (Player is free) -- you'll have to disable HYPER-V -note you don't have to uninstall it - and then simply run the Vmware free converter tool from within your current Windows physical OS.

I think this can also create HYPER-V type files too (never tried that though) so if you want to go down that route try that method.
Note though edit your target vm settings -- you might want just the OS and applications - not all the data disks and I'd set the processor to a single processor.

It's all in an easy GUI. You need to create an account (free) - but at least vmware doesn't nag you with loads of ads etc.

Download VMware vCenter Converter Standalone for P2V Conversion

If you want to reduce the size of the OS Disk in the VM - what I'd do is to create the vm first with the converter tool, then download an ISO image of GPARTED or other partitioning software, boot the VM with the ISO image as first boot device, reduce the partition size, then backup the OS with Macrium, create a new VM with the new HDD size and then restore your backed up VM image.

Sounds complicated but actually very simple - especially if you have your VM on an SSD - won't take more than a few minutes for the backup / restore.

Cheers
jimbo

 

The converter there isn't exactly what you would be using on a desktop version of Windows. I went to try that one out here and couldn't get anything done with it. It's leans more towards the server platform instead.

The one thing I could say to you sheamus would be simply trying it a try with Generation 2 option to see how it goes. But if the Generation 1 is required you are going to be more or less stuck trying to work things out with that option instead. As for the ide drive factor you would notice a slight change in overall performance when measured but that is a result from hardware there. 5,200rpm for the top end of an ide compared to 7,200rpm on a typical sata II or III drive would be noticed to a degree.

 

Hi there
It worked fine for me -- choose the Stand alone converter - you don't need all the server stuff - and ensure you run it from within your actual physical running Windows system.

I'm currently re-building my NAS box (Linux Centos 7 server) otherwise I'd post a screen shot or two.

It's very simple and works.

Cheers
jimbo

 

I ran into a bunch of account log in requirements and other things I normally would never see simply going for the latest WS 12 Player. But the real concern was the size here even if compressed down from the whopping 703gb to 500gb would still be simply too large since I run VMs about 60-80gb in size at the max except for some Linux distro down about 15gb tops for LMDE not ubuntu which will be about 8gb tops. A good number of the programs here wouldn't even run anyways being hardware dependent.

 

Hi there.

I think if stuff is highly hardware dependant then using a VM probably isn't the right way to go unless you can get specialized VM's that have access to the physical hardware (Pass thru) to your actual hardware. In this case you will really need to use something like Esxi or equivalent. HYPER-V is probable even harder to use your own hardware - especially for USB and Multi-media support.

Vmware and Vbox use "para virtualisation" so you can get limited hardware support such as installing hardware drivers on the VM for some USB devices.

For extreme gaming / specialized graphics for instance you can only really test these properly in a VM environment if you use something like Esxi - which (Free BTW) is quite fussy over the base hardware it runs on. You will need to set up essentially a "White Box" to get it to work and you'll have to access the VM's remotely via RDP from a laptop or another computer.

The Esxi OS is actually quite interesting -it's tiny so takes effectively ZERO Host resources which can all be given to the VM's and can easily be booted in a few seconds from a USB stik or even an SD card. Once the OS has booted you can remove the media as it's not needed again - the OS is memory resident (and tiny).

Great fun if you've got the time and equipmenet to play with this. Note - one thing it's incredibly fussy on is for a supported LAN or Wifi NIC. If it doesn't like the Nic it won't boot. INTEL NIC's always work though.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Well take a look at any OS. Where does it load into? RAM! With the more intensive graphics, sound, memory grabbing CAD, etc. you are then primarily looking at hardware based rather virtual environments unless as you mentioned sufficient access to physical host components is present. I think most will find that VMware being a primarily commercially applied software while still providing free to try out at home versions will exceed any expectations some might have for VBox's capabilities in that area. VMware is commercial while VBox is still open source there but not as involved as far as the program structure. A good number of things are simply not supported on VBox being the small guy there.

 

Hi there

I think we are getting a little off topic here - but isn't VBOX part of or associated with ORACLE -- I believe another commercial organisation.

I've though used VMWARE over the years and usually found it OK.

Anyway I merely gave a suggestion on how to Virtualise a physical machine - standard process known as P2V. Nobody is forced to chose that method - but to say it's only for Servers is a bit of rubbish when I said quite clearly use the Stand alone version.

Now if it doesn't meet your requirements - that's fine but don't throw irrelevancies into the argument. In any case once you've created your VM you can always shrink the size of the Virtual "C" drive or whatever with GPARTED, backup and restore again - then you've got your OS on the small disk.

With Linux you might also have to re-install GRUB2 if the /boot partition changes.

Cheers
jimbo

 

The one thing that might work here would be trying this out with a smaller image I keep on one of the storage drives here for either one of the laptops or second build I use for testing things. One laptop no longer working had a 500gb there and the new one with 10 preinstalled a 750gb. Then I have the older 10240 clean but need to see another made from upgrading over the Threshold 2 for the 104271 now on everything including the main.

Getting back on the VMware vCenter problem while the regular VM Player and now WS 12 works like a champ every time the Converter program has it's own reality there.





I've been all over the VMware support and community as well as seeing a general Bing search on the web and the only close to that particular error is described as the need to replace something after you have already been running the program where you have a menu to work with. Manually going into the services.msc to start the services up sees the other two of three start right up on the spot while the Standalone Server flops!