Cloning your PC and making a virtual machine out of it isn’t as hard as you may think. At first glance, it seems like a daunting task but there are tools that make it very simple. There can be many reasons for wanting to make a virtual clone out of your PC and since you are here already, you probably have your reason as well (let us know in the comments). You have several software titles which allow you to run virtual machines:

Of those, VMware seems to be the most stable and supports the most operating systems (while Virtual PC only supports MS operating systems). Once you have your virtualization software chosen, you are ready to begin.

Clone your PC to a Virtual Machine

Create the Image

  1. Download the free software Disk2vhd – download the software on the machine you wish to image/convert to a virtual machine
    Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk – Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

  2. Extract the archive

  3. Execute disk2vhd.exe – there is no installation for this application

  4. If this is your first time running the application, Agree to the EULA

  5. Tick (check) the partition/drive you wish to clone to a virtual machine

  6. Change the path to the VHD File name if needed – default is the same location of Disk2vhd – you may get “Path to VHD File Name is invalid” even though the path is valid. I used C:\file in the end which worked.

  7. Click Create and wait for the copy to complete

Use the Virtual HDD (VHD File)

All of the mentioned virtualization software supports .VHD files. The tutorial below will walk you through using it with Microsoft Virtual PC.

Note: If you followed the above instructions on a 64-bit PC to create a VHD, you cannot use it as a virtual hard-drive in Windows Virtual PC. This is because Virtual PC only supports 32bit operating systems. You will see “Missing operating system” error if you attempt to load the clone with Virtual PC.

  1. Copy the VHD file you created from part one onto the computer that has Microsoft Virtual PC, the machine that you are going to run the virtual machine in.

  2. Load Virtual PC

  3. Click Create virtual machine

  4. Name your virtual machine, I called mine “clone”

  5. Click Next

  6. Select RAM size

  7. Click Next

  8. Select “Use an existing virtual hard disk”

  9. Click Browse (next to Location text bar)

  10. Select the .VHD file you created and copied from above

  11. Click Create

You now have a virtual clone of another PC.