Virtualise an XP physical disk drive - dead motherboard

charlie_says

Hi,

Would anybody know a way to virtualse an XP installation from a physical disk? The machine in question has had a motherboard failure and a friend needs to access an older application on it. I've pulled the disk in question and can access the file system fine. Unfortunately I can't seem to get my hands on the older application and import the data to a new machine.

Normally no problem if you can boot the machine I know, but I cant do it as the motherboard is borked.

Many thanks

Mr. Fancypants

You could try disk2vhd https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

charlie_says

Thanks I eventually got it working with Symantec System Recovery 2013 from this post

http://serverfault.com/questions/56429/convert-a-hard-drive-into-a-vmware-machine

Rip out drive of dead machine, into another machine for conversion to vhd via SSR2013 and then virtual environment.

Had to use that as it changes the vhd to include a mini setup so it will detect all the the appropriate drivers and install them on boot in virtual environment.

I also had to fix the MBR on the virtual disk and rebuild the boot.ini (remember ARC paths!)

Disk2vhd is pretty decent though in fairness

Cheers - one happy new customer who will be backing up from now on I can tell you!