Virtualize my old Vista Box

[EvanAdams]

I have one piece of old 2009 enterprise software on my Vista Box, cost me $1600. Now the mfg has changed to subscription only model >$2000/yr & their software won't let me install my existing CD onto a new machine. They say I moved it from my original HP & then installed it twice on this machine so I've used all my allowed 'installs'.

Worst part: I use this software perhaps once a month. So it doesn't pay to buy a new copy.

This vista machine is dying. Fan is broken, hard drive seems to run 100% of the time and the old Core 2 Duo is not really keeping up anymore. I need an upgrade.

How do I ISO this whole old vista machine and dump it into a virtual machine on a new computer? Then I figure I can run this one stupid piece of software and not have to spend >$2K per year $170 / use for this software. What do I use VM Ware?

 

[stlcardinals]

You will want to decide what platform you are wanting to Virtualize with. The two big ones are VMWare and Microsoft's Hyper-V. Both VMWare and Microsoft have tools for doing physical to virtual conversions also known as P2V. P2V is what you will want to research.

 

[EvanAdams]

thanks, sometimes figuring out what to type into google is the hardest part.

ugh.... I don;t have any sort of server. This seems really hard! I figured I could run it inside of something like parallels on a mac but on a pc.

 

[MontyAC]

I use VMware Player to run a WinXP virtual drive for a scanner program.

 

[stlcardinals]

If you have a windows 8 box, hyper-v is built in. Just have to install it from the windows features.