Make an image of a live XP machine and then run it elsewhere

#“Make an image of a live XP machine and then run it elsewhere”

I blogged recently about the pain of upgrading a machine from XP to Win 7 due to the dreaded Sage. So I've continued to hold off. But I just had a total brainwave for a potential solution and it looks like it is possible.

I thought "what if I could snapshot the XP install some way using VMWare or VirtualBox?". The idea is that I could do the snapshot, save it somewhere, do a clean install of Windows 7, install VMWare/VirtualBox and then run that image inside Win7 to do any Sage work.

Turns out those fine people in VMWare are already miles ahead of me. I still remember installing a pre-release version of VMWare back in 1999 and thinking "this is gonna be huge". If only I'd had money I'd have bought stock. Funny to then be working in EMC when they bought them.

Anyway. I'll report back on whether it works for me or not. Obviously I'll try on another machine before zapping the source machine.

Conor O'Neill

Tech guy who likes running slowly

Bandon, Cork, Ireland https://conoroneill.net