Hey Guys,

Welcome to a new post.

From ME
at my MIND

HA HA

I have been playing around with Setting up some 32gb memory cards as all-in-one boot drives.
I have also been playing around with running virtual XP on window 7 to run my scripts and some of my 32 bit audio apps through.

My goal is to create this:
A Memory Card that contains syslinux boot to linux mint that I can then run my virtual XP on my memory card from Virtual Box or some other device.

Here are a few bugs I have found upon the way and a few things to keep in mind:

To copy your virtual XP disk from windows 7 to Virtual Box, VMware or Microsoft Virtual PC you must first combine your vhd files.
You are required to have 2 .vhd files in order to run your virtual machine.

The first file you need is you Virtual XP.vhd (located in C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\)

NOTE YOU (may) WILL ALSO NEED THE Virtual XP.vmc, vmcx, vpcbackup files from this location as well!

and also the Virtual XP Base.vhd file (located in C:\Program Files\Windows XP Mode\)

To run your Virtual XP machine on Portable Virtual Box, VM Ware or Microsoft Virtual PC these files must be combined.

Here is a link to one method of doing this on windows 7

however I was trying to accomplish this on windows XP so I could not combine in this method.

Here is what I had to do.

Copy both files into one directory.
Make the Virtual XP Base.vhd file read only
(right click on the file and select properties then check ‘read only’ in attributes and click ‘ok’)

Install Virtual PC 2007

Run Virtual PC 2007
File > Virtual Disk Wizard
Next
Select “Edit and Existing Virtual Disk”
Browse to your .vhd file location
Select the Windows XP.vhd
DO NOT SELECT OR OPEN THE BASE .vhd file
this could cause issues if that file is modified in any way!

After you have selected the .vhd file click ‘next’

You are now going to get an ERROR – Virtual PC!

“The virtual hard disk’s parent appears to have been modified without using the differencing virtual hard disk.”

(oh nooooo…)

“Modifying the parent virtual hard disk may result in data corruption. It is strongly recommended that you mark the parent virtual hard disk as read-only to prevent this in the future. If you recently changed time zones on your host operating system, you can safely continue using this virtual hard disk.”

but its OK!

Next we are going to merge the differencing drive (windows XP.vhd) with its parent drive (windows XP base.vhd) into a New File!

Select the location of where you want to save the file and give it a new name like:
mynewvirtualpc.vhd
and click ‘next’

(yaaaayyy)

Please wait…..

and wait….

and wait….
…..

If all went well the wizard should say “the virtual hard disk was merged successfully.”

You should now be able to use your new vhd on Virtual Box, VMware or Virtual PC.

To do this you need to create a new pc and direct it to the .vhd file that we just created!

——————————————————

SIDE NOTE:

When I booted up I couldn’t remember my XPMuser password!!

to workaround this I rebooted and pressed F8 at startup and went into safe mode.  Once in safe mode it asked me for a user and password.  I typed in ‘Administrator’ and left the password blank.  This allowed me to then login and change the XPMuser password from Start>Control Panel>Users

As an alternative I also booted to safe mode with command prompt and upon logging into the console type:

Net User XPMuser *

and then enter twice to reset the XPMuser password to blank

——————————————————

UH OH   Watch OUT!

please keep this in mind

I ran into some trouble and found out why it is necessary to also copy your Virtual XP.vmc file to make sure everything is configured properly.

In windows XP if there is a significant hardware change in loading a virtual drive it will trigger windows validation.  To avoid this issue you want to ensure that you maintain the settings in your original .vmc file.

What I did next:

From Virtual PC 2007

I clicked ‘New’ and then NEXT and then selected ‘add existing virtual machine’ and imported the original .vmc file

However before getting the computer to successfully boot I had to edit the .vmc  file (with Notepad++! or your favorite text editor or by changing the setting in the virtual console) and change the directory of disk 1 to point to the virtual disk I created earlier.

In Virtual PC I got the following error:

The hardware standard (Virtual PC 7) for virtual machine “Scripts” is not recognized.
The virtual machine can start, but some settings may be changed and some settings may not be used.

Uh OH!

So I took a closer look at the .vmc file and found:

<name type=”string”>Virtual PC 7</name>

Apparently the virtual computer is looking for my Virtual PC7 hardware profile which is not available on Virtual PC 2007

I decided to scrap using Microsoft Virtual PC and try something else.

Here is some good refrence material for editing .vmc file

Enjoy!

Here are some cool links:

UNetbootin USB creator (to make the Linux Mint boot disk)

Yumi Boot Installer (from Pen Drive Linux)

NOTE  I have NOT gotten YUMI to work on my 32gb usb drive yet… it appears to be using an older version of syslinux however UNetbootin did work.

YUMI is def much better though!

Also check out:

Portable Virtual Box

Its AWESOME!