The WinOps Blog

Steps

1. Download VMware vCenter Converter for Windows and install it on the physical Win7

machine to be converted: https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/info/slug/infrastructure_operations_management/vmware_vcenter_converter_standalone/5_5

2. Run the VMware Converter on the physical host. It took about 30 minutes to convert

a 28 GB instance of Win7, which is how much space Win7 plus programs and data

consumed on a 32 GB partition. The converter opted for multiple .vmdk’s instead of

one monolithic image. It selected 2 GB non pre-allocated slices, probably because the

external drive is formatted FAT.

3. Transfer the converted virtual machine files to the destination host from the external

drive. The Win7 physical machine is no longer needed. The rest of this process is

performed on the destination host - Linux in this case. The .vmx file is not needed.

4. In VirtualBox, create a new guest and select an existing hard disk to attach. Be certain to

select the .vmdk and not one of the slices.

5. Once the guest is created, edit the settings. Select the System motherboard settings and

adjust the amount of base memory. I suggest a minimum of 2GB of RAM if the host has

enough to run stable. You may need to enable IO APIC.

Enable PAE/NX on the processor tab. Enable VT-x/AMD-V and Nested Paging.

6. On the display settings I gave it 128 MB of video memory and enabled 3D and 2D

acceleration.

7. On the storage settings, I removed the default SATA controller and added a SCSI

controller. Re-attach the guest .vmdk at this time to the new controller.

Check Use host I/O cache.

8. Select the default NAT network adapter.

9. The guest virtual machine should now start up without problems. If you do have

problems, please review the References and Resources section below for the various

settings others encountered as successful.

10. The first time I booted the Win7 virtual machine, it updated some drivers and requested I

specify what kind of network (home, work, public). I selected work for one test and home

for a different test.

11. Install the guest additions. Reboot the vm.