Transfer VirtualBox machine to physical machine

Samuria said:

Welcome to the forum. You can take a disk image and then write it to an actual drive the problem then is drivers as they will all be wrong if your lucky Windows will find new drivers

Windows 10 is really good at sorting drivers as a rule. OP could sysprep VM install to remove hardware drivers.

cereberus said:

Windows 10 is really good at sorting drivers as a rule. OP could sysprep VM install to remove hardware drivers.

I would do this without Sysprep; without the /generalize switch it does not remove drivers and make image hardware independent, on the other hand /generalize would most probably fail because provisioned apps.

Kari said:

I would do this without Sysprep; without the /generalize switch it does not remove drivers and make image hardware independent, on the other hand /generalize would most probably fail because provisioned apps.

My comments below are for all readers - obviously you Kari know this of coursem


I agrew with above but just putting a Windows 10 drive on a new pc is not 100% guaranteed to work though. I have had cases refuse to boot on older versions (Windows 7 was always hit or miss). Windows 10 is far superior, and will just work in most cases, but I had a lot of issues going from an Intel to AMD laptop. By sysprepping, I sorted issues very quickly


Sysprepping with generalise will work if just putting drive in new pc fails or gives issues providing you remove the offending apps it proviso Dr for all users Kari says, which can be a bit tricky sometimes though but not that difficult to sort.

Obviously, one should just try just putting Drive in new pc first (I would backup drive first in case it gets corrupted on new pc)

tbergman said:

Hi,

I've searched and can't seem to find an answer for this: is it possible to move a virtual machine in Oracle's VirtualBox to a physical machine?
Thanks

Hi there

Actually this process can be quite simple in the case of W10 --

The process in general is called V2P or "Virtual to Physical".

What you need to do is as follows

1) Power on your VM .

2) Obtain a copy of free Macrium and install on your VM.

3) UNINSTALL VM additions (if VBOX) or VMWARE TOOLS if running using VMWARE --don't re-boot the Vm after this as otherwise your video resolution will be wrong and make running the next step (step 4) more difficult -- you just don't want to have VMware tools or vbox additions on the new Windows installation on the physical machine !!!

4) Run the macrium program (from the VM) to create a Disk IMAGE (not a clone) of your VM. copy All the partitions.

5) Create a bootable restore version of the Macrium Free program and boot it.

6) Restore the image you created in step 4 to your "C" drive (or a bootable HDD).

7) now boot it. --the first time you might get a boot error --use the windows recovery disc / usb to fix this.

8) Windows will now boot -- and usually pretty well all drivers it needs will be found easily enough automatically.

I've done this loads of times with VM's created via VMware --there's no reason to suppose that the process is any different with VBOX. You might need to attempt to do the boot repair a couple of times - or you could be lucky and not need to do it at all.

Note - you will probably be asked to re-activate Windows after this process -- technically it's a new installation on to a different machine. You *could* get lucky and find activation isn't required. If the original VM was created from an OEM version of Windows (i.e one that was pre-installed on the old machine) it probably won't activate. If it is RETAIL or has a multiple licence (corporate / enterprise etc) then if any problems with activation Microsoft will have no problems activating by phone. Unlike most hideous calls to Indian call centres (Banks, utility companies, internet providers etc) it's a quick and painless process if you have to do it.

If the VM is merely being restored to the ORIGINAL physical machine it was created on then the original key should still work.

If none of these work the old "get around" is still working -- install a version of W7 that is of similar build to your W10 --e.g HOME, PRO, ULTIMATE and then just upgrade to W10 - After an initial upgrade restore your W10 image which should now be activated. - Not sure how long this loophole will last as it's been over a year since the "Free upgrade" technically ended.


Cheers
jimbo