Transferring Virtual XP machine to Physical laptop

[BSRNB]

Hi all,

I have been asked to convert one of our VMs to a physical machine. The VM is running Windows XP Professional (32bit) and has specific settings we would like to keep identical. The hope is to take one of our spare Dell laptops and reformat it to takeover the functions of the virtual machine on our network. There is not much data on the VM machine; about 20gb used of the 75gb provisioned.

What options do I have to accomplish this? Please advise me of additional info that may be needed to answer a question like this.

Thanks in advance,

Ben

[continuum]

the existing flat.vmdk can be cloned to the harddisk of the notebook with a Linux LiveCD

dd if=/networkshare/xp-flat.vmdk of=/dev/sda bs=1M

on first boot after the clone boot into a BartPE and use the driverinjection-plugin to inject the drivers

if you are experienced with BartPE the whole operation is quite easy

[subhasis2009]

Hi continuum,
can U explain the total process with BartPE.

subhasis

[zXi_Gamer]

can U explain the total process with BartPE.

In simple words, imagine it as a Live CD for Windows with basic drivers loaded and operational for additional drivers to be loaded too.

[Linjo]

Another possibility is to use Horizon Mirage to first centralize the desktop and then move the CVD to the physical machine.

// Linjo

[JarryG]

One solution could be using some disk-imaging software, i.e. Acronis TrueImage or O&O DiskImage: install software in your VM, create image of running system, save it somewhere (ftp, usb, etc). Then create recovery disk (imaging software with disk-image), boot on physical computer and "restore" system there. After that you still had to update/reinstall some drivers (hard-drive controller, graphics, etc), maybe adjust hard-drive partitioning...