Turn a VM into an actual computer?

[The VCR King]

I have a VM of Windows XP with a crapton of old 1990's games and retro crap on it. If I used that Windows XP VM and ran a backup to an external HDD off of it, couldn't I technically restore it on a real XP computer and have all my VM stuff on a physical machine?

 

[H4rdR3s37]

Very difficult or even impossible to transfer virtualized XP enviroment on physical machine. But you probably can run that XP VM through virtual machine on other computer.

 

[Geoff]

For the same reason you can't "easily" swap hard drives between different machines, when the hardware is vastly different generally the computer will not boot.

 

[The VCR King]

For the thing in the VM where you select how many CPU cores you want the VM to have, does that mean how many CPU cores the VM will use off the physical PC? Like, I have the VM set to 4 cores, so does it use 4 of MY physical cores then?

 

[beers]

What other cores would you expect it to use?

 

[H4rdR3s37]

For the thing in the VM where you select how many CPU cores you want the VM to have, does that mean how many CPU cores the VM will use off the physical PC? Like, I have the VM set to 4 cores, so does it use 4 of MY physical cores then?

That means how many cores VM CAN use. With 4 cores set, it CAN use up to 4 cores if necessary. For Win XP virtual machine with old software, 2 cores should be enough.

 

[Darren]

Basically you're allocating those cores to that VM. So if I had a virtual machine on my machine with my 8320 (8 cores) and 12GB of RAM and set the VM up with 2 cores and 4GB of RAM, the OS within the VM would only "know" about the 2 cores and 4GB of RAM. Then it'd make use of it as needed.

 

[Geoff]

For the thing in the VM where you select how many CPU cores you want the VM to have, does that mean how many CPU cores the VM will use off the physical PC? Like, I have the VM set to 4 cores, so does it use 4 of MY physical cores then?

That means how many cores VM CAN use. With 4 cores set, it CAN use up to 4 cores if necessary. For Win XP virtual machine with old software, 2 cores should be enough.

Basically you're allocating those cores to that VM. So if I had a virtual machine on my machine with my 8320 (8 cores) and 12GB of RAM and set the VM up with 2 cores and 4GB of RAM, the OS within the VM would only "know" about the 2 cores and 4GB of RAM. Then it'd make use of it as needed.

So, pretty much exactly what it said. Where was your confusion again?

 

[spirit]

I believe this is actually possible. You can boot from a VHD: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/hh825691.aspx

However I don't think you can boot from a VHD of XP using that method - looks like it's Windows 8 and later. There might be another method of booting from a VHD of XP if you look around, but booting from a VHD is basically what you want to do if you want to run your virtual machine as the 'host OS' on a computer.

Have a look at this? http://www.nextofwindows.com/native-boot-vhd-on-a-windows-xp-computer-virtualization

 

[HackSpoon]

Very difficult or even impossible to transfer virtualized XP enviroment on physical machine. But you probably can run that XP VM through virtual machine on other computer.

Nothing is impossible.

 

[Agent Smith]

This might, MIGHT work. It's meant more for converting a host to a VM. Not too sure if it does the reverse. Read the manual thoroughly.

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter

Edit- Okay, manual says support for Windows Server 2003 (x86 and x64) SP1 and SP2. Not sure if you can do this with XP.

If you just install XP on another machine, this could be your ticket. http://www.easeus.com/free-pc-transfer-software/transfer-programs-to-new-computer.html

 

[Okedokey]

If you have a fixed vm drive set up, i don't see why you couldn't move it wherever you want.