.vhd wont boot in Hyperv or Virtual PC

[micklacey]

Hey guys.
I have created a vhd of a windows 7 machine just for messing around with as it is my first time using hyper v. it was created with sysinternals disk2vhd application.

when i set up virtual pc on win 7 and try to boot up the vhd it just gives me a blank black cmd prompt screen....

when i try it in hyper v i get the same screen. virtual pc sees the vhd mounted as ide device but yet it wont boot from it.

hyper v doesnt see it in the boot screen like virtual pc but it is mounted in the settings. any ideas on what may be the problmem. i tried searching but couldnt find an answer. The VHD is on a dell equalogic iSCSI storage area if that makes any difference also.

i attached images of everything i specified.

[sorinso]

I don't get it...
Disk2VHD is a P2V (Physical-to-Virtual tool). You took an existing Windows7 installation and virtualized it?
If so, what was the size of the original disk? What disk controller was it sitting on?
What is the size of the VHD file?

[micklacey]

Originally Posted by sorinso

I don't get it...
Disk2VHD is a P2V (Physical-to-Virtual tool). You took an existing Windows7 installation and virtualized it?
If so, what was the size of the original disk? What disk controller was it sitting on?
What is the size of the VHD file?

yes. i took a existing machine and created a vhd of it using disk2vhd.
the original disk was 80gb. it is on an sata drive

[micklacey]

i am actually getting a problem when i create a new vm also.
i created a vm and set it up to boot from is of server 2003 and all i get is a blank black screen with a flicking cursor screen aswell.

help meee!!! please! Thanks

[danielp]

You cannot just take a disk from a physical machine, create a VHD out of it, and boot it as a VM. The tool you mentioned - Disk2VHD - is nice, but it's not a P2V solution, it just creates a VHD out of a physical disk. So if you have a working VM you can now attach the VHD to it and access it, just like plugging in a new disk into a working machine.

[smdrzal]

Yes this is true - I could access a Disk2vhd drive (cloned from an older laptop running XP) on a known good VM. However if I set that vhd as the boot drive on that VM I get the same result as micklacey - black screen. When I boot it to safemode it gets to mup.sys and hangs after that. I suspect it may be hardware abstraction so my next move is to do a repair install of XP on it to see if it will then boot - unless someone has some other knowledge to impart....

[teiger]

Does the VM see the disk as Active? Use diskpart to set it active and see if that helps.

[danielp]

Guys, why don't you listen?

DISK2VHD is not a true P2V software!!!!

Why do you think you can boot off the VHD? DISK2VHD only looks at the disk itself, not at the operating system. It exports the physical disk to a virtual disk, which you can then use. It's just like using Windows Vista/2008/7 Windows Backup for a disk. That tool too will export the disk to a VHD file. DISK2VHD does the same. It does NOT migrate the operating system, just the disk.

It's not supposed to work that way.

[smdrzal]

Actually it does work for me, and as I suspected it was the hardware abstraction that produced the system hang.

I decided to clone my work Laptop (XP SP3) for the experiment, and these are the steps:

1)Downloaded Disk2VHD (v 1.3) from sysinternals (free) and unzipped on the laptop
2)Find a place to store the new vhd - I used a 320GB external USB, but any storage device that pc can see and is big enough to hold your hard disk should work
3)Run Disk2VHD and input the name and location for the new file
4)On your virtual host create a new VPC (I use Virtual PC 2007) and add that new vhd you just created as the primary hard disk.
5)Make sure you have an ISO of WinXP or an actual disk. If using an iso you'll need to mount it so it can be booted from.
6)Fire up the new vpc and have it boot from that XP disc.
7)Let it run setup and then select option 2 (R) to get repair console
Login in to windows (need admin pw)
9)Type “cd system32” press enter
10)Assuming your CD (or mounted iso) is drive D - Type “expand d:\i386\halacpi.dl_” press enter
11)Type “copy halacpi.dll hal.dll” press enter and then press y
12)Reboot
13)Press F8 to get to safe mode
14)After the message that new stuff was installed, click OK for reboot
15)After system boots back up, log in and install VM Additions

That's it - my work network can't tell the difference between the two devices - so of course when I connected the real one with the virtual still on - both got bumped.

I repeated this 3 times and had success each time I followed the above steps.

Hope this info helps others.

[smdrzal]

Oh I forgot to mention that yes the repair install did work also, but was alot more work than the "expand hal" method.