Dustin Henning wrote:
If you have this system set up how you want and it required a lot of
configuration, one option might be to do a full backup (including system
state) of the configured system, then install windows on an hvm and do a
full restore, I have read that this is a good p2v (and vice versa) method
for Windows, as the system state backup apparently doesn't replace drivers.
I have never tried it, so I can't tell you the caveats, but depending on
your situation, it might be worth a shot (I have read similar articles about
moving from one piece of hardware to another). Also, in Windows, all
drivers are loaded the same way, so if the right driver can be installed
from the initial hardware configuration, Windows will boot in the new
configuration. I have done this many times to change HD controllers in the
same system for performance reasons (going to a separate IDE controller was
a big performance boost on old IDE computers). I never had much luck doing
that, though, unless I could put the hardware in to install the drivers for,
that may mean that it won't automatically use a driver just because it is
there, it has to be associated with the specific piece of hardware.
Nonetheless, depending on how much time you want to spend, you might have
some options.
Dustin
<snip>
and now I think it's Jeff.
Windows is picky about hard disk drivers. The initial installation
seems to install some drivers that get loaded early for your disk
hardware. QEMU emulates a different type of hardware than what you
probably have and so it can't find the root disk once the kernel has
booted. If you change the main disk controller on a real machine, you'll
probably have the same problem.
I'm not aware of a way to fix that, unfortunately. I've generally had to
install my windows images from scratch.
This is a trial of what I really want to do, which includes running
Windows 2003 Server and a domain of Windows XP Professional clients (not
many - likely 2-3 of them) for testing and education, and ideally a
Windows XP system which is to be moved to different hardware anyway, but
preferably without being reinstalled.
Installing drivers is okay, using xen is fine, I tried kvm because it
doesn't require a special kernel.
I'm a bit dismayed to see mentions of FX chipset and piix3 in the
qemu-kvm doc (I remember piix4, but piix3?). Surely that won't work for
Vista.
I did try an install of my Windows on the HP dc7700p using the ISO in
its recovery partition, but I quit as soon as it asked me for the other
CD as evidence I'm licenced[1]. I suspect this version is locked to my
BIOS and so doesn't require activation, so it's probably not going to
work at all, but enquiring minds need to know.
The backup/restore procedure might work, it's supposed to preserve user
data, but if it's supposed to clean out malware then it should not.
I might let it sit though, and see whether someone has another idea:-)
Merry Xmas all.
[1] Producing the CD isn't a problem, sticking it in the imaginary CD
drive was, and while I think the needed ISO is right there too, I
especially don't know how to shuffle virtual CDs.
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Cheers
John
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