Question Virtual Machine install

[dtsaudio]

Hello,
First post here, I hope this is the correct forum.
Just started setting up a W10 machine, and so far so good. However I have a number of technical and financial programs on my old XP machine. I need to access these and also need to transfer about 1000 files.
My thought was to take my old hard drive (which has XP installed) and install it in the new computer and then set it up as a virtual machine.
Will this work? Is there anything I should watch out for?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

you could build an XP virtual machine and install your financial programs to that vm and then transfer your data files too

But the way you mentioned won’t work

 

[dtsaudio]

So it's not possible to set up my old drive as a VM? I would have to start with a clean install of XP on the VM. I want to use a separate hard drive for the VM.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

If you have a working system VMware professional workstation can sometimes virtualize a working PC into a VM but that software is rather expensive. And to be honest I’ve tried it a few times and it didn’t work.

You can store the virtual machine on a separate hard drive that’s not a problem but you either have to be able to virtualize what you have already, or start with a fresh VM and I think they still let you activate XP

 

[dtsaudio]

That's more or less what I thought. It would be a lot less trouble if I could use the existing drive. I just hope my registration number still works on the XP disk.

 

[TerryLaze]

My thought was to take my old hard drive (which has XP installed) and install it in the new computer

Best way to make sure to loose data.
Back up your drive onto a new drive or a virtual drive file and work with that.

You can try to boot up your virtual with the old (cloned) drive and see what happens if you are really lucky it will boot up,if you while you are still on the XP system uninstall all drivers,shut down windows and then make the switch it will help you odds because when booting on the VM it will search for new drivers for the different hardware.

 

[dtsaudio]

Good point about the drivers. I don't even need it to print, just display.