Virtualize a dead computer? Can it be done?

Hello,

To make a long story short, we are trying to revive an old dead windows 98 computer (motherboard died). I've heard about virtualization but never tried it.

Is there anyway to take that existing hard drive and virtualize so we can access the Pc in a virtual environment?

The problem is that there is a program on it we need to run, and we don't have the installation media.

Thanks,
Jim

 

Well, make the '98 drive a slave to the master if it wasn't before first, you would then have to install Virtual PC or VMWare and mount that drive as boot. Could work but no gahrauntees eh. Good luck Jim.

Oh, you will have to keep the virtualiztion going to continue to get access to that program, I don't see any other way out. I hope your machine is up to running virtuals.

 

To be clear..

It other words, say my working computer is XP and the dead one is 98. Connect the 98 as a slave, and when you say 'mount that drive as boot' am I booting natively off the 98 hard drive with my XP computer (there might be driver issues) or can the VM ware mount it as a boot drive from within XP?

Sorry if the question is vague... still trying to figure out this virtualization thing.

Jim

 

BTW, I've never tried this but it can't hurt your main machine.

 

You will use that '98 drive as a boot for the VM. As I said, I'm not sure. You still have your '98 disks, that may help? Just guessing here. Anyways, install VPC after you have properly transplanted the drive and mount it when asked for. It asks, floppy/CD/hard drive or similar.

 

Paragon has a VM making tool - the personal one was given away on the web - now you can D/L the business version.
http://www.softexia.com/virtual-drive-utils/1082-paragon-virtualization-manager-corporate.html
I make a VM from the drive, I'd think booting the drive virtually would make changes to the system - as in new hardware detection, right?


Last time I played with that idea, the VM said there may be issues using a phyiscal drive. So if you need an alt method put the drive in a working system and boot a P2V cd and make a VM of the system.

Here is some more nfo:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=17381

 

P2V does work, I've done this at work quite a few times.

 

Thanks for the help - got it working! Actually I was kind of amazed, but it worked on the first try.

I decided to try Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 Sp1 and a program from technet called Disk2VHD because they were free.

P2V looked really good and seemed to have a lot more support, but didn't look free. I got the impression it was a trial. I'll try it too to see what happens when my trial license key comes in.

So next question: Whats the best way to back this up? This machine was about 5 Gb. I'm thinking external USB drives. Any other ideas?

Thanks again by the way