Windows 2000 PRO

Joshy said:

Hello, I have a very old system running Windows 2000 pro that I want to virtualize, mostly because I can't find such old hardware anymore easily and this is from a working machine.

I need to passtrough a serial port, and make an exact copy of the existing disk image and run it on the VM.

How would one approach this? Running hyper-v on the host machine and to convert the existing hdd to VHD format with Disk2vhd?

Thanks

I would clone existing hdd to a blank vhdx file. The vhdx file needs to be smaller than spare capacity on new pc - you may need to shrink C drive.

However bigger issue is running Windows 2000 in Hyper-V which I suspect is very difficult, and I anticipate you would have to create a legacy bios installation in Hyper-V. The key issue is whether Windows 2000 can act as an Remote Desktop Protocol Server. If not, you could only run Hyper-V in basic mode and you are restricted on drive sharing and no sound.

I cannot say about a pass through serial port - that almost certainly would need a usb to serial port adapter and that would almost certainly only work in advanced mode.

So I do not think you would be able to easily achieve what you want in Hyper-V.

However, it may be possible to create a native boot vhdx file (cloning as above) and create a boot entry to directly boot into vhdx at the host level rather than in a virtual machine. Having said that, the key difficulty of trying to run at Host level is whether you can get suitable drivers and that could be a showstopper.

For once, I think you have more chance of at least partial success using Virtualbox or VMWare Workstation rather than Hyper-V perhaps but I cannot say about serial port passthrough.

It would seem VirtualBox can do the serial port pasthrough.

VirtualBox Manual | Chapter 3. Configuring Virtual Machines - 3.10. Serial Ports

Will offer this mostly from memory, Win2000 was the pro version and WinME was the home version, both were replaced by WinXP Home and WinXP Pro. WinXP Pro was the first offered as 64-bit while WinXP Home was only 32-bit, not sure but may be a factor with getting Win2000 to work on newer 64-bit CPU. I can't test it as I recently/finally junked my WinXP computer.

I do remember booting Win2000 (SP4) in Hyper-V.
Runs in basic mode, no sound.

For COM port pass-through, there is an option in the VM settings though. I tried once without luck because I didn't mapped the COM port to a 'pipe' in Hyper-V correctly.

This might help:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/an...rt-passthrough
See there below:
GitHub - tdhoward/COMpipe: Links a serial COM port to a named pipe

F22 Simpilot said:

I wouldn't use serial. Just install another HDD inside the computer and then use Disk2vhd to replicate to that...

You can also use VMware Workstation Player. That's what I use for my virtual machines. In this thread, one of the sevenforums members asks how to do it.

I think "Elvis has left the house". Been no reply from OP in 6 days.