Browse and select the virtual drive that you created. You then will be prompted to create a new virtual drive or use an existing one. Next, you create a new VM with settings ( operating system, memory, etc.) based on your old computer. Once installed, copy over the virtual hard drive you created with Disk2vhd. Remember also to download and install the VirtualBox Guest Extensions. Now it's time to install VirtualBox on the new system. For the best performance, you should create the virtual hard drive on a different physical drive ( network or external). Next, select the location for the virtual hard drive file. Select ' Prepare for use in Virtual PC' and ' Use Volume Shadow Copy' and deselect ' Use Vhdx'. Startup Disk2vhd, and you get only a straightforward menu. The first thing to do is create a virtual hard drive from your existing physical hard drive. Both programs are free for personal use, and the links to the software are below. To do this, you will need two programs, Microsoft's Windows Sysinternals Disk2vhd and Oracle's VirtualBox. Physical-to-virtual hard drive migration of a Windows installation is a valid function for customers with full retail copies of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. Note: With the change of hardware from physical-to-virtual, Windows will need to be re-activated. This way, you can upgrade to a newer version of Windows and still access your old Windows XP programs. You can also create a virtual hard drive from your physical hard drive.

You create a virtual hard drive and install your operating system inside of it. I've written a few times about using VM's to run different operating systems on the same computer. If you're one of these people, there is hope. Either the software came pre-loaded, they lost the installation media, or the company went out of business. The problem most people are having with going to a new version of Windows is that they have software installed on Windows XP that they cannot install or will not run on a more recent version of Windows. But you can still use your old version of Windows XP and the installed programs on a newer version of Windows using a Virtual Machine ( VM).Ī physical-to-virtual migrated version of Windows XP inside of VirtualBox running on Windows 8 Using Windows XP as a primary operating system is no longer an option.

After April 8th, 2014, Microsoft will no longer support Windows XP, which means no more security patches or hotfixes. If you haven't heard by now, Windows XP has come to the end of its life.

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