Virtual Machines

PDD

Hi Folks,

I have a ghost image that I want to use to create a VMWare image, unfortunately its Win2K and VMWare converter seems to be a steaming pile of ****. From other sources Ive been told that I can use something called Livestate Recovery - Desktop Edition to restore a ghost image to virtual machine. Has anyone done this or do the know another way around it?

Regards,

Dave

lamaq

Just use your bootable Ghost cd within VMware and restore the image that way. Never tried it with VMware but have with Virtual Server, should be no difference.

PDD

Eh how are you able to use a bootable CD from within VMWare?

lamaq

As I said in my first post I've only done this with Virtual Server and its been a while since I had a look at VMware. Within Virtual PC or Server is a menu to capture either the physical cd drive on the host or an ISO image. Will check now if VMware has the same.

ethernet

PDD wrote:

Eh how are you able to use a bootable CD from within VMWare?

In VMWare Server, when you create a profile for an OS, point your CD/DVD drive at the bootable recovery CD and start that virtual machine. Then you'll need to supply the image. Don't know about Ghost, but Acronis lets you remove the recovery CD as it's loaded into RAM. Then you can insert the DVD containing the image, connect a USB device or access a network share to restore the image.

aidan_walsh

Server also lets you use a bootable ISO image as a virtual CD.

PDD

Hi Guys,

Cheers for the info, unforutnately I dont have VMWare Server but I might be able to get it.

Dave

Alun

PDD wrote:

Hi Guys,

Cheers for the info, unforutnately I dont have VMWare Server but I might be able to get it.

Dave

Anyone can get it, it's free to download and use from the VMWare website!!

PDD

Hi Folks,

Ok I downloaded VMWare Server, I created a new image for Win2K. Then edited the settings so the VM used the CD-ROM on the host machine. When I start the VM, I go into the boot menu, choose boot from CD-FROM and it seems to skip past the bootable Ghost CD I have in the drive and try to use PXE.

Dave

Alun

Not sure whether VMWare Server has this option (VMWare WS does) but try selecting the "Legacy emulation" check box in the dialogue you use to select the CD-ROM drive .. that sometimes helps. Also make sure that you have the "Connect at power on" box checked in the same dialogue box!!!

It might also help to manually select the drive rather than leaving it on "Auto" if you have any other (virtual) CDROM drives on your system.

Alternatively just use the ISO file you used to make the physical CD from and point VMWare at that instead of at the physical drive. The advantage of this is that the restore will run a lot faster too.

matt-dublin

make a windows 98 boot disk and save the ghost.exe file on it.

map the vmware server floppy to your floppy drive.

start up the vm ware image and boot it to the floppy.

when dos loads, type ghost.

either that or try microsoft virtual pc.

im pretty sure thats free too now.

Alun

Just one thing .. I'm not too familiar with Ghost, but are you absolutely sure that the CD itself is bootable, or just contains a ghost image of a bootable partition (not the same thing)? As a test, if you put the CD in the drive of a physical PC, will it boot OK? Alternatively if you have UltraISO, WinISO or something similar it'll also tell you if the CD is bootable. If so, you're OK and you should also be able to boot it in VMWare and should try some of the suggestions I made, if not then you'll have to do what matt-dublin suggested above and make a bootable floppy with ghost on it.

matt-dublin

fyi : www.bootdisk.com

Airliner

Get XenSource as a virtual machine instead. www.XenSource.com Free for systems up to 2CPU, 4GB RAM and four virtual machines. This is a full commercial product and not the open source version.

mickoneill30

What benefits does that give over the free VMWare server. Is it faster, have better performance, more compatible?????

Airliner

It is a hypervisor so you are not limited by the VMWare support for the underlying hardware. It also makes great use of the hardware virtualisation in the Intel-VT and AMD-V chipsets. Instal really is ten minutes and it is very easy.