A little over a year ago, we covered how to carry your Windows 7 on a USB flash drive with the help of VirtualBox portable tool. When you use a portable tool such as VirtualBox you need to create a new Windows virtual machine before using it as a portable OS. Now, what if you want to create a virtual machine out of your existing Windows 7 OS?
In this guide, we will cover how to create a virtual Windows machine by cloning your existing Windows operating system. And once you have a clone of your OS in the form of virtual drive you can use free virtualization solutions like Virtual Box, VMware Player or Microsoft Virtual PC to carry and access your personalized Windows OS on any machine.
Here are the steps that you need to follow in order to clone your Windows OS. In this guide, we are cloning our Windows 7.
1. First download and install Paragon Go Virtual software. Paragon Go Virtual is available for free of cost, but you need to register (free) with Paragon software to avail the free license. During installation, click Get free serial button to head over to the official registration page and enter particulars to get the license via email. Enter the product key and serial key, and complete the installation.
2. Once installed, you will be asked to reboot your machine to complete the procedure.
3. Run Paragon Go Virtual application and click P2V Copy option to start the P2V Copy Wizard.
4. Once the wizard is launched, click Next button to see disk volumes and external hard drives, if any.
5. Check the box next the Widows installation drive and click on the Next button to proceed further.
6. The wizard will detect the OS present in the selected drive and prompts you select a virtual software that you want to use to run the virtual machine. Select a virtual software from the available three (VMware, VirtualBox and Microsoft Virtual PC) that you are familiar with and then click Next button (we have selected Oracle VirtualBox).
7. In the properties page, enter a name for your virtual machine and change the memory allocation before hitting the Next button.
8. In the next window, you can change the properties of virtual disks. Click Next button to go with the default one.
9. On this screen you need specify the location where you want to save the virtual machine. You are almost done. Click Next button again to the start the process of virtual machine creation.
10. Depending on the amount of data present on your Windows drive, it might take a few minutes to hours. Once the process is completed, install a virtual machine and then open the virtual machine by clicking the appropriate option. You are done!
Anthony says
Thanks for sharing this. I tried it out on my Windows XP Desktop. I no longer need 2 PCs running at the same time with a KVM switch.