How to transition your computer to a new OS worry-free.
With Windows 7 arriving around the corner, you may be considering letting go of XP or Vista and upgrade your computer to Microsoft’s latest operating system. From my experience so far, with the Beta version of Windows 7, it is definitely worth the upgrade. Upgrading your OS however can be a scary undertaking. You can use Microsoft’s Windows Easy Transfer application to help you move your user accounts, email, and documents, but you will not know if you have missed something until it is too late. What if you forget to transfer a file that you need, or what if a program you use suddenly does not work anymore? Whether you choose the Windows 7 upgrade option, which keeps your files and programs intact, or start from scratch with a brand new install, this is how you can create a worry-free backup of your old operating system. I am going to walk you though how you can create a virtual machine of your current computer, so that you can run your new and old OS at the same time – making it easy to transfer files between the two.
Step 1: Clean house on the old OS.
This step is optional -- especially if you have plenty of external hard drive space. Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to delete your temporary internet files, old restore points, and other data you know for sure you will never need to make the virtual machine of your old operating system as small as possible. You can get started on this task by firing up the Disk Cleanup wizard. An easy way to find the cleanup wizard is to press the windows key 
and type “disk cleanup” into windows search (without the quotes). When the wizard fires up, go ahead and choose the option to clean files from all users of your computer. Go ahead and check all of the components and clean up your files. Next, click on the “More Options” tab and clean up your old system restore points.
Now let us take a look at how much space you will need to create your virtual machine. Press the windows “start” button and then click on “computer”. Right-click on your c: drive and select “properties”. Pay attention to the amount of used space. This is approximately how much free space you will need on an external or network drive in order to create your VM. If you do not have enough space, then consider buying a bigger external hard drive or freeing up more space from your old OS.
Step 2: Create a virtual machine of your old OS
- Shut down as many running programs as you can. This prevents your data from being out of sync during the conversion.
- Download and install VMware’s free converter tool (I am using version 4.0) to create your virtual machine.
- When you run the converter, make sure you right-click and “run as an Administrator”.
- Click on “Convert Machine” which launches the conversion wizard.
- When asked about the source type, select “powered-on-machine” and then select the “This local machine” option.
- Now we are ready to select a destination for your virtual machine files. When you are asked for a destination type, select “VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine”.
- Next select VMware Player 2.5.x as the product.
- Select a location on your external drive and give the VM a name.
- When you reach the view/edit options section, click edit on the “data to copy” list item. Now select the disk volume marked as c: to convert. Make sure you un-check your external drive. You can modify the size of the disk on the VM to conserve space. Click on the “Target size” column entry to set the VM disk size to be the minimum or enter your preferred size.
- Edit the “Devices” list item and reduce the memory to be half the amount on your computer. This should divide the available memory between your VM and new OS.
- Edit the “Advanced options” list item and select the “Install VMware Tools” option.
- After finishing the wizard, the conversion will take several hours. It is probably best to run this overnight.
Step 3: Manual config
VMplayer is free, so they “hide” certain customizations that their commercial products provide. Luckily you can edit the .vmx file of your VM manually easily. One such customization is to add a shared folder so that you can easily transfer files to/from your VM to your new OS. Open up your .vmx file in a text editor, like notepad, and make sure the following lines are in the file:
isolation.tools.hgfs.disable = "FALSE"
sharedFolder.maxNum = "1"
sharedFolder0.present = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.enabled = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.readAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.writeAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.hostPath = "C:\Users\username\Documents\vmshare"
sharedFolder0.guestName = "vmshare"
sharedFolder0.expiration = "never"
Change the hostPath to a folder on your host OS that you want to share. The guestName is just the name of the shared drive that will appear on the guest OS.
Step 4: Test it
Before you upgrade your machine to the new OS, you can test the new VM to be sure it runs okay. Install VMWare’s free player (I am using version 2.5.1). Double click on your vmx file and you should see a clone of the machine you are currently running.
To enable the shared folders, click on the “VMware Player” menu item on main window and select “Shared Folders” and click enable.
Step 5: Install the new OS
Now that you are sure that you have a valid working backup of your OS, go ahead and upgrade to your new OS.
Step 6: Install VMplayer on the new OS
Once your new OS is up and running and you are pretty confident that it is working, you can install VMPlayer on your new OS and run your virtual machine. Make sure you enable your shared folder by following the same steps that I mentioned in step 4. Now you can transfer files to and from your old and new OS. Once you are confident that you have all of your files and settings transferred, you can delete your VM.
Note: As of the writing of this blog, there is a problem accessing the internet from your VM if your host OS is Windows 7 Beta. Since I only used my VM to transfer my files to my new OS, I didn’t need the internet. Hopefully this bug will be fixed by either Microsoft or VMware.