Comments on: OSX: Converting Parallels or VMWare to VirtualBox

By: benfrain

benfrain — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:24:24 +0000

yannick - if you follow the steps above you won’t need to even start Parallels.

By: yannick

yannick — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:48:44 +0000

Since my demo is expired, how can I uninstall parral tools without start my virtual machine?

By: Fredrik

Fredrik — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 23:00:36 +0000

Regarding Parallel Tools. According to this site:

http://download.parallels.com/desktop/v5/docs/en/Parallels_Desktop_Users_Guide/23651.htm

it can be uninstalled from Mac OS.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:45:44 +0000

Never mind. It seems to be a problem with that agp440.sys driver & Virtualbox.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:40:59 +0000

Hmm, even when I check “Enable IO APIC”, I’m having problems. I am able to get to the Win XP loading screen, then I get the BSOD and it rebbots. If I start XP in Safe Mode, the system seems to hang when loading “agp440.sys”:

[URL=http://imgur.com/svA6U.jpg][IMG]http://imgur.com/svA6U.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

By: Alpay

Alpay — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:46:34 +0000

Ben that was spot on. Thanks for the tip mate.
Cheers,
Alpay

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 03:17:18 +0000

Ben– that fix was a huge help for me too. Now I can finish my server migration and enjoy Christmas without that hanging over me. I owe you!

By: chris

chris — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:52:12 +0000

ben, thanks much! worked like a charm for me as well.

peace,

chris

By: Brady

Brady — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:53:07 +0000

Ben - Thank you for the “Enable IO APIC” trick. That fixed the non-boot issue I was having.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:20:29 +0000

For anybody experiencing the same problem as John above, try checking the “Enabled IO APIC” box in the VirtualBox settings.

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 23:53:13 +0000

Thank you SO MUCH for these instructions! The first time I went through them, importing an Ubuntu installation, I got some strange errors (invalid magic number?!?) at step 15 trying to import the converted vmdk. The solution was to restart VirtualBox, open the Virtual Media Manager and add the vmdk FIRST. This worked fine. Then I created the VM and added the vmdk, and everything worked.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:11:21 +0000

Thanks for documenting this solution. I was wondering how I was going to migrate my Parallels 2.5 installation to VirtualBox, and now I know!

By: Kathy

Kathy — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:08:59 +0000

These steps worked perfectly for me in transferring a Vista virtual machine from Parallels. I had a second virtual hard drive in Parallels, so I just had to add it to VirtualBox after the fact. The only thing I neglected was to uninstall ParallelsTools in Parallels prior to doing the conversion — doesn’t seem like it can be easily uninstalled once the machine is in VirtualBox.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:40:09 +0000

Ok, ignore me, I’m going mad. Just restarted my parallels VM and realised the desktop icons that seemed to be missing in VMWare conversion were actually the Mac’s Desktop icons and VMWare wasn’t setup to do it’s Unity thing !!!

By: Adrian

Adrian — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:52:21 +0000

Hmmm, well VMWare did it’s initial stuff, restarted Vista and nicely cleaned off all the contents of my desktop. Any idea where it would have put the files ???

By: Adrian

Adrian — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:46:56 +0000

Hi John,

Not sure if this is any help in working out why it’s not working but when I tried to perform the Parallels Vista 64 Ultimate to VMWare Fusion (in preparation to go to VirtualBox), I got an error in VMWare saying that my VM Session hadn’t shut down cleanly during the import.

I guess I just rebooted the Mac one time and never restarted Parallels as the trial 14 days had expired.

Anyway off to Parallels site to register and get another 14 days, re-install a new Parallels, restart Vista and shut it down properly fixed the problem and now I’ve got a VMWare conversion.

So, maybe your Windows OS hadn’t shutdown correctly and VirtualBox didn’t pick it up like VMWare did for me.

Just a thought! Anyway, you should be able to get another trial key from VMWare.

Hope you get some luck.

I’m just at the stage of checking VMWare runs my Vista install ok.

By: benfrain

benfrain — Sat, 30 May 2009 16:54:54 +0000

John, I’m not sure, I’ve only ever come from a Parallels VM to VirtualBox. However, I have done that successfully with a Parallels VM that had expired (was setup on a demo of Parallels which had since expired) and had no problems. Not sure if the same can be done with VMWare machines where the licence has expired, sorry.

By: John Faulds

John Faulds — Sat, 30 May 2009 02:02:19 +0000

I’m trying to go direct from VMWare to Virtualbox and followed your instructions, but when I go to start the VM, it just hangs at the point where the screen is black with a white bar along the bottom (ie before even booting properly into Windows). Would it have anything to do with trying to import from a VMWare whose demo period has already expired?