I recently made a vhd from my physical XP system with everything I want pre-configured and setup as I would like. Re-registered and am running it as a windows virtual machine. I have also stripped it down to be as small as I can get it and am compacting it. My next step is to convert it to work with Vmware. I have a couple of questions I hope can be answered..

1. If I create the Vmware machine with an install of Vmware on my current XP install before I transition to Ubuntu; will that same machine work with vmware on Ubuntu?

2. If I purchase vmware fusion or something will they give me a build for both linux and windows?

3. Where do I get all the drivers that will be needed for the vmware hardware configuration AS I have completely stripped all unused driver .inf files from my current virtual machine?

I will be using the method outlined in the following page to prep my image for the change over to vmware. Please take a look at it and let me know if the method is reliable.

http://www.symantec.com/connect/arti...ndows-xp-image

I currently only have vmware player and vCenter Converter Standalone Client.. When I move to Ubuntu I plan to run multiple geusts, but for right now will my current Free software suffice for completing the preliminary tasks I am planning?

Thank you for any help you can provide,

A bit about me and Linux:
my experience with linux is so far andLinux, linBios, ddwrt x86, Knoppix, I have not had a standard physical install of linux yet, tried to install on windows vm, without success... So I am going to be very happy to get started but am insistent upon keeping my XP servers ready and available in vmware..

A VM is a type of system that also depends a bit on the host. So if you keep both of those the same, the usual answer is the host OS can change.

The best way would have been to use a P2V converter tool from VMware maybe.

Fusion is for Mac systems. What do you have? If windows then just start with the VMplayer maybe. It is the best for newbies.

Most things are generic in a client but there are some that are difficult to fix maybe. Might need the xp disk to repair, might need to download special vm drivers for maybe some parts. The nic usually is one of the more easy but you can never tell.

You might still consider redoing this all from a base vm from xp disk.

I think you may wish to try a server OS maybe. VM's on linux can get tricky no matter the distro. Might look at opensuse, one of the red hat clones or ubuntu. Knoppix is a great live cd but a poor choice for a server.

I definitely want to test other options for OS.. I am keeping the windows around for visual studio, IIS, windows mobile, and a separated VM with just Microsoft SQL.. All updates are completed on these images and programs installed so moving them over would be optimal, instead of juggling disks and hunting down everything on Microsoft again.

Can you give me a list of the devices found in the device manager of xp running in vmware... think this might be able to be piped to a file from command but I am unsure. Maybe the driver names would help too?

The one VM still has all the driver files in folder and the physical system does too. If I can conjure up exactly what drivers I need I will be much happier than dumping a bunch of stuff back on my minimized copy. ??

I am thinking that if the drivers that load when I boot normal don't work, I should be able to boot safe mode scan for hardware changes and load the drivers from an iso from there. Safemode uses generic drivers I think?

Seems that virtualization is not going to work for me I however have learned a lot since I started on this project and have opted for dual booting options.

To add further research and working on this "small" project, copied current install XP to SD card and mod'ed registry and drivers to boot from usb, switch drive letters and stuff. 18mb per second card ran SLOWER w/ physical system than virtual machine on 30mb per second external Hard Drive.

So now keeping the driver and reg mods and minimizing the xp install, and setting up a dual boot so I can have both worlds...

Just one question now, what do I do with this 32gb sd card I just bought. Could use it for files and stuff, However???.. Since my SSD is 32gb could use it as a backup..

Think the problem is I should really get a bigger hard drive for my netbook.