Virtual Machine Question

I have a laptop running windows 7 and it is getting a little old in the tooth. There is a lot of software that is either unavailable or I cannot find the key to reinstall on a new PC, but I don't want to lose it. I am looking at buying a new windows 10 all in one pc and understand I can make a virtual machine. Does anyone know if you can copy an existing machine (my laptop) onto the new one and keep all my old software?

Thanks in advance.

 

In theory it's possible by creating an Acronis image of the laptop and converting it to a VMware virtual disk that VMware could run on the new machine. I would guess similar convoluted actions are possible with other imaging and virtual machine software. How successful it would be only testing would prove, but worth a try I think.

 

This approach sounds worth exploring too but I haven't tried it myself - yet

 

i've been investigating this myself, and the main problem might come from the difference between OEM and retail versions of windows. OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer
my boss wants his old xp computer on a newer computer, the approach earthling suggest works great at creating a virtual machine file that virtual machine software can see and use. my problem stems from all of his important software needing reactivation once it was up and running in the virtual machine, including win xp itself. if my understanding is correct, virtually all windows that come preinstalled on a computer is the OEM version of windows, which is tied to that computer, and that computer only, and can't be reactivated in any other environment, whether it is physical or virtual. i suppose i could call microsoft and tell them what i am trying to do, but i imagine that their response to me would be.... sorry, no can do, OEM versions of windows are not transferable, and they would probably say something like.... well, you should have bought the retail version, paid us a million times more for the operating system, then you would have been able to reactivate your copy of windows on a different computer. i could be wrong, it's just a guess, but i feel it would be a futile attempt. microsoft is in it for the money, and is not interested in helping us preserve what little sanity we have left in our lives. the only thing you can do is to give it a try and see if it works. good luck with it.

guess i should add that there is a setting in the virtual machine, something called IO APIC (?)
that needed to be checked before virtual box booted the winxp virtual file successfully.

 

Cannot do any tests myself as away from home at present but hope to do so next week.

 

Windows 10 VM is a bit choosy..............
If you use Balarc Advisor, http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/belarc_advisor.html
you can find almost all the keys to your software, Print it out, or, copy all licenses .
If you make an iso of the W7 machine (get rid of/save any data to make it as small as possible.)
Oracle Virtualbox will setup iso files ,with no problem. http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/virtualbox.html