RE: [OT] Can I make a virtual image of this PC ?

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Kevin,

Yes, this is referred to as "P to V" (Physical to Virtual) and
there are
a number of tools & products available to do this. Most of the major
virtualization software products (VMWare, MS Virtual Server etc) have
some degree of capability in this, although it's not always included in
the freebie versions of those products.

There are also 3rd party options available, - PlateSpin is one that
comes to mind.

I haven't ever actually *done* a P-to-V mind you, - mainly for the
reason that every physical machine I run can't be effectively
virtualized, as it's still near-impossible to provide VMs with access to
non-standard hardware in the physical host (e.g. Capture cards, Graphics
cards, and so on...) Therefore, I'm not entirely sure what happens to
the activation state of the OS in such circumstances.. - I'd guess that
if you are using an OS that required product activation than it would
like de-activate, since this is usually triggered by a hardware hash
value... If the hardware changes significantly, the OS requires
reactivating. I imagine corporate/volume licensed OS versions that don't
require product activation in the first place would be OK.. - but like I
said, I haven't tried, so I stand ready to be corrected..

HTH

Paul G.

PS, Vista's "complete system backup" has some degree of half-way
capability, in that it is an image backup of the entire PC, but the
image can then be mounted as a virtual drive (much like an ISO file) and
browsed & accessed through explorer for the purposes of file
recovery....


-----Original Message-----
From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Kevin Hawkins
Sent: 20 February 2008 17:22
To: UKHA Group
Subject: [ukha_d] [OT] Can I make a virtual image of this PC ?

Is it possible to make a virtual image of this, ie the PC I'm using now
and then load/run that in say VMWare on another PC , or even this one  ?

If you can then what happens re Windows licensing - if for example you
have two XP images with the same license activation ?  I'm not looking
to circumvent this , as I have spare licences, but I would rather not
have to build up a new system either as I have so much installed.   ISTR

I can change the original license to another anyway... but what if I
dont ?


K