Tip: Convering your Virtual PC 2007 disks to Windows Virtual PC (on Windows 7)

Author: Tobias Zimmergren
URL: http:https:https://zimmergren.net//zimmergren.net//www.zimmergren.net

Introduction

As you all know, most of the SharePoint people (architects, developers, testers, designers, ) are running our environments virtually. That rocks! But, there’s some things one need to think of when you want to migrate your VPC to Windows 7.

I just "migrated" all of my Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 virtual machines to Windows Virtual PC which is a feature set for Windows 7.

While doing so – I bumped into one major PITA which I now want to share so you can get around it if you’re converting as well…

The problem & solution

You would think that you can take your .vhd files and simply launch as normal in Windows 7. Although that’s not untrue, there’s something you’ll need to do first if you want to have full Windows 7 integration support:

UninstallVirtual Machine Additions before you even open the VHD file in your Windows 7 Virtual PC setup.

Basically, all you need to do is uninstall the additions in Virtual PC 2007, copy your .VHD file to your Windows 7 machine and then hook it up as usual with your Windows Virtual PC setup there.

If you do not do this, you will not be able to install the Integration Features of your Windows Virtual PC on your virtual disk.

With that said, just uninstall on VPC 2007 – move – install on Windows 7 VPC. Then simply install the integration features.

Note: Failing to do this, will most certainly get you to a stage where your Virtual Machine can not copy/paste, you can not drag’n’drop things, you can not get a full integration with your normal desktop.

Thanks to Daniel Sörlöv for tipping me of about this, it saved me tons of time!
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