Clone Windows XP system to new age computer, Virtual or physical

[Zingrox]

Hey, guys. We have some older systems at work that run some of our processes. The computers are all XP service pack 2 and 3 and their hardware from that era as well. I'd *like* to clone them to a virtual machine on a new computer, in lue of hardware failure. However, I haven't found a good way to do so, largely due to drivers. 

 

How should I tackle this issue? Any help would be great. I'd like to build plug and play backups in case of a failure. Thanks a bunch

[tkitch]

make it a VM, you're gonna have a hellish time running XP on anything more modern than 4th-6th gen intel.

 

There are apps that will clone a drive to a VHD to let you run it in a VPN.  

 

google "Windows XP Physical to Virtual" and you'll find solutions, you may have to pick based on your preferred VHost solution

[Zingrox]

Thank you for the reply, I'm happy I spent time on the VM route.

The issue I run into is the various software crashing when opened. I've already made a vm (virtual box), used xp's backup and restore option (I know not the best) and "restored" a file system to the vm. Upon opening, say, a program on the desk top, it crashes for several reasons. The computer asks for a restart to confirm changes, and upon doing so it bricks itself after post. A lot of the drivers associated with hardware fail, which I assume is my issue, and I'm really unsure what to do with that. Any thoughts? 

[maxithefox]

id say uninstall all the drivers you can then use disk2vhd to make a vhd of the systems drive its part of the sysinternals package.

 

edit: i see you already got a vm working 

[maxithefox]

On 02/09/22 at 12:39 AM, Zingrox said:

Thank you for the reply, I'm happy I spent time on the VM route.

The issue I run into is the various software crashing when opened. I've already made a vm (virtual box), used xp's backup and restore option (I know not the best) and "restored" a file system to the vm. Upon opening, say, a program on the desk top, it crashes for several reasons. The computer asks for a restart to confirm changes, and upon doing so it bricks itself after post. A lot of the drivers associated with hardware fail, which I assume is my issue, and I'm really unsure what to do with that. Any thoughts? 

have you tried uninstalling the drivers and installing the Vbox guest editons

[Zingrox]

On 2/10/2022 at 1:02 PM, maxithefox said:

have you tried uninstalling the drivers and installing the Vbox guest editons

I will try this, thanks for the reply. Will update soon enough

[doommood]

On 2/8/2022 at 4:39 PM, Zingrox said:

Thank you for the reply, I'm happy I spent time on the VM route.

The issue I run into is the various software crashing when opened. I've already made a vm (virtual box), used xp's backup and restore option (I know not the best) and "restored" a file system to the vm. Upon opening, say, a program on the desk top, it crashes for several reasons. The computer asks for a restart to confirm changes, and upon doing so it bricks itself after post. A lot of the drivers associated with hardware fail, which I assume is my issue, and I'm really unsure what to do with that. Any thoughts? 

Use Starwinds converter. Once get XP converted into VHD or VMDK, create a Virtualbox VM, attach the virtual disk as a boot device, and boot the VM. Once set, get guest tools installed onto the VM. 
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-v2v-converter

Another option that does the job is to use Clonezilla. Its image would allow you to restore the system to a virtual or physical machine. 

https://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/01_Save_disk_image

https://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/02_Restore_disk_image

[AudiTTFan]

On 2/8/2022 at 4:03 PM, Zingrox said:

Hey, guys. We have some older systems at work that run some of our processes. The computers are all XP service pack 2 and 3 and their hardware from that era as well. I'd *like* to clone them to a virtual machine on a new computer, in lue of hardware failure. However, I haven't found a good way to do so, largely due to drivers. 

 

How should I tackle this issue? Any help would be great. I'd like to build plug and play backups in case of a failure. Thanks a bunch

If you're thinking of installing it on anything newer than an Intel Ivy Bridge chip or AMD FX, VMs are the only option. No physical hardware newer than LGA 1155 or Socket AM3+ is compatible.

[Zingrox]

So I got the machine and a majority of the software running properly, the way I did it is as follows:

Used disk2vhd to make a vhdx file of the machine. The reason I did is because the vhd file would crash when booting, or get stuck on mup.sys forever. I was able to edit the vhdx file with just file explorer, and I hunted down hal.dll (hardware abstraction layer, relative to the computers hardware which was my issue). I copied it to some other folder incase I wanted it again and then copied my own computers hal.dll to the xp system32 file path. This is entirely on a hope and a prayer that it'd accept my hardware (obviously didn't work). I used powershell to convert the vhdx to vhd again. Used that vhd on the vm.

What did work, though, is the vm finding the file as corrupt/failed. I "mounted" an xp install disk iso and told it to fresh install, then chose to repair the existing windows install. It replaced the hal.dll itself and the software is now happy with it. Computer boots and runs as it should

 

I'll let you know any future updates, thanks fellas