How to convert a physical Windows installation to a virtual one.

[taha_mcp]

Hello,

The title is pretty self explanatory. I want to duplicate an installation of Windows 10 and boot it up in an virtual machine environment. I have read a few articles on this topic namely this one from HowToGeek, but they require me to be booted up in that installation of windows. How can I do this conversion without being logged in inside that installation of windows? I do have access to the hardware, but I am not logged in. Physically logging into this installation of windows is out of the picture for me, so I'm looking for a way to be able to log into it inside of a virtual machine.

[Electronics Wizardy]

disk2vhd and put that vhd in your hypervisor to boot from?

 

What hypervisor/virtual machine software are you using?

[taha_mcp]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What hypervisor/virtual machine software are you using?

I'm using Virtual-box

[taha_mcp]

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

disk2vhd and put that vhd in your hypervisor to boot from?

I just read disk2vhd's documentation and it seems that it might work. I thought that I MUST run disk2vhd in the operating system that I want to convert, but it seems that it is not necessary. I can just plug the SSD containing the Windows installation and I can convert it without logging into it. Is my understanding true?

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 hours ago, taha_mcp said:

I just read disk2vhd's documentation and it seems that it might work. I thought that I MUST run disk2vhd in the operating system that I want to convert, but it seems that it is not necessary. I can just plug the SSD containing the Windows installation and I can convert it without logging into it. Is my understanding true?

yup that would work, then add that vhd to virtual box.