Friday, April 13, 2018

Windows 10 Physical to Virtual on VirtualBox


Converting a Windows 10 physical build to virtual (P2V) is quite tricky.  Typically without the procedure below boot attempts will end in
FATAL: no bootable medium found! System Halted
or
FATAL: INT18: BOOT FAILURE

It can be done using the following procedure.

Turn off Bitlocker and decyrpt the drive.  I'm not sure this is necessary but it was part of my successful procedure.  I decrypted the drive in an attempt to solve the problems which the video below actually solves.

manage-bde -protectors -disable c: -rebootcount 9   (to turn off the PIN prompt)
manage-bde -off c:       (to decrypt drive)
mange-bde -status c:    (to check status)

Use Disk2VHD to convert the physical machine drive to a VHD file.

Obtain Windows 10 boot / install media to access the repair options.  An ISO image is best.

Create a VM in virtual box.
Connect the VHD to an IDE controller.
Connect the Windows 10 boot / install media ISO to an virtual optical drive.
Set the optical to boot first.

Boot to the Win 10 Install / Repair media and follow the instructions in the video to repair the UEFI partition.

Physical to Virtual P2V With VirtualBox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wVJUimaq2U

Once the partition is repaired shut the machine down.
Set the Hard Drive to be the first boot device and Enable EFI on the system motherboard settings.

BOOT to virtual Windows 10 :)

Install the VirtualBox tools

Sychronize/update the machine account password with the domain.  The physical machine you've virtualised will not logon to the domain after this.

Take the snapshot.

Remember to synchronize/update the machine account password again before age expires.  This is set by GPO but is usually 30 60 or 90 days.  If the VM changes it's password with the domain after the limit is reached, then the older snapshot will no longer logon to the domain.  You may have to start all over again.  Put a reminder in your calendar !