Restoring Windows 2000 onto a virtual machine

[Rhuobhe]

Hi there, I am trying to test a physical windows 2000 restore onto a VMware guest. The guest is also windows 2000 with the same SP4 updates. The only difference is that the guest has less HD space and VMtools installed. I've tried to restore the disk files, the system object and then a copy of the original HAL.dll and boot.ini from the vm. I also tried following several leads from google and one from IBM that tells me to restore "{SYSTEM OBJECT}\winnt\system32\catroot\*" c:\winnt\system32\ -replace=all -subdir=yes first. None of these have worked so far. The system just hangs trying to boot. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[MikeyD]

Probably an issue with different drivers, you can do this with tools like Cristie's BMR. I can't say I've attempted it the way you are doing, are you able to get in to safe mode at all?

 

[Harry_Redl]

Hi,

what about restoring the data as you did (asks for reboot - so power off) and then run the VMWare Standalone Converter to "repair" the VM?

Harry

 

[SniperKing]

Hi,

I dun think your restore would work as the drivers and SSID issues of windows after changing hardware box. Even when you perform a ghost image backup and restore to VM, you have you perform sysprep tools from Microsoft toolkit.

The simplest thing is refer to what Harry says, use a VMconverter to make it VM.

 

[Rhuobhe]

I got it working. I did it a few times to make sure it worked. I built a VM, installed SP4 and the same post SP4 patches. Restored the system files and systemobject and then rebooted. I did not update vmtools until after the restore. I did not have to do anything for the HAL.dll or boot.ini but in a real world scenario, it would depend on disks etc.