XP Physical to Virtual

Last time, I had taken my old XP hard drive from a previous computer and converted it to a virtual hard disk (vhd) using disk2vhd.  I was able to add it to a machine in VirtualBox 4.2.6, but it wouldn't boot.  I changed the disk controller from IDE to SATA, and I was able to boot, but it locked up.

Today, I checked the "Enable IO APIC" box under the System page of the VM settings.  I also changed the number of CPUs from 1 to 2 to match the previous physical machine.  I probably only needed to enable IO APIC.

After that, the machine booted fine and started installing new hardware from windows update.  Not all of  the installations were successful.  My mouse did not work until some of the devices were installed.

I rebooted into safe mode to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions, including Direct3D support.  To do this, I had to restart the machine multiple times until I was able to press F8 during the boot with the keyboard captured.

After installing the guest additions (as administrator), I rebooted normally.  All of the devices seemed to be installed properly.

I wanted to check the video, so I first went to graphics properties.  The adapter was listed as VBOX with 128 MB of memory.  I had set that earlier in the virtual machine settings to 128 MB, which is the maximum allowed.  I reran dxwebseup to install the latest directx, but the machine was still current.

Then I uninstalled some of the old software (video, sound, and network drivers) and rebooted.

Finally, I ran a game to see what would happen.  It started pretty slowly.  I had sound, so that was good.  The mouse sensitivity was so far off the charts that I couldn't even get into the menus to adjust it.  The problem seemed to be caused by using mouse integration.  Once I disabled mouse integration, the sensitivity was back to normal.

I loaded the previous save.  It took forever to load.  So long that I left to get a snack.  It eventually crashed.  That's usually IO driven.  I'll have to check the hard drive performance of the virtual drive later.

I rebooted and restarted the game.  I turned off all of the graphics options and ran it in windowed 1024x768 resolution this time.  It took a long time to load again, and then it crashed.  I'll play around with it a little more, but it looks like a physical machine might be best in this case.

Migrating Physical XP to virtual

I have a disk from my old desktop that has XP on it specifically to play some old games.  I finally turned it to a virtual image using disk2vhd from Sysinternals.  I made a new VM in virtualbox and started it up.  Of course, nothing happened.

I shut the vm down and removed the IDE controller and replaced it with a SATA controller.  I attached the vhd and started the VM.

This time I got the warning that windows did not start successfully and would I like to start in safe mode or normally.  Of course I selected normally, and it locked up.

I'm pretty sure that I have to go in and replace some of the hardware settings and maybe the disk ID.  I believe that there are some common known issues when converting physical XP machines to virtual.  It's just too late to look them up right now.

Intro

I've been meaning to start a blog for quite a while.  Like most people, I'll stick to what interests me, so I'll have a typical technology/computer security/gaming/car/flying/cooking blog.  Actually, other than the cooking, I guess that would be pretty standard for a teenager.

The primary reason for starting it today is that I just started my flight training today.  I want to document it while it was still fresh in my mind.  Hopefully this will help someone else, like other people's writings have helped me in the past.  However, I don't really expect anyone to read this.

Let me explain the topics.  First, technology and computer security.  I've always liked technology and have an engineering degree.  I enjoy building my own computers, playing with networks, and hacking anything that I can.  I'm an Offensive Security Certified Professional and just took my CISSP exam.  I'll try to document new technology, tablet, vulnerabilities, and other security topics.  I especially want to document exploits that I have researched.

Gaming.  When I have free time, I like gaming on many different platforms.  That changed when our kids were born.  Now that they are a little older, I can play some games with them, such a Skylanders.  Now that I'm in flight training, gaming time will probably be limited to X-Plane.

Cars.  My wife and I are looking for cars, so I've been doing a lot of research and will try to document my findings.  She's interested in a Mazda 5, and I'm interested in a Subaru BRZ with 50 more horsepower.  I've got my fingers crossed that 2014 will have an STI version.

Flying.  As I mentioned above, I just started flight training.  I've wanted to do this for at least 10 years.  The first flight was a little overwhelming.  By writing it down, I think I'll reinforce what I learned.  This will be kept in a different blog: jbisflying.blogspot.com.

Cooking.  Like I tell my wife, I don't like cooking.  I like eating.  Early on, I realized that meant I would have to cook food for myself if I wanted to eat well.  I can't/won't eat out every day!  Every once in a while, I run across a good recipe.  I want to make sure I keep track of them.