I have a XP VM that I use for 2 items (Quickbooks) and POP3 email storage. I have years worth of information I didn’t want to lose. I recently bought a shiny new computer so I could have windows server 2008 r2 & hyper-v. It’s a Intel I3 (quad core), 6 GB of ram, 1 TB hard drive. Anywho, it took a few steps to get my XP vm migrated. One thing to keep in mind the hardware changes, so it requires to reactivate with Microsoft. Remember XP was the first OS that required activation. Here are the steps I used. Not sure if anyone has formally documented, so I wouldn’t officially endorse this. You have to A) uninstall Virtual PC Addins B) Install Hyper-V integration services (upgrades HAL).
0) Create the VM in Hyper-V manager
1) Copy the VHD, attach the existing VHD
2) Log into the XP system
3) When it boots, don’t want to activate right now, answer no
4) Uninstall virtual pc addins (you could do this ahead of time)
5) Add the Hyper-V integrations services disk within Hyper-V manager
6) Install, reboot
7) It’ll go through an update (HAL upgrade)
8) Reboot again
9) Sign-in again, don’t activate (answer No) until you verified it has a network connection
10) Activate (assuming you have an internet connection). Type IPConfig from a command prompt to be sure
The down side if you don’t activate the XP, you can’t login. 🙂
Enjoy,
Steve Schofield
Microsoft MVP – IIS
Pondering Thought 