Comments on: OSX: Converting Parallels or VMWare to VirtualBox

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:37:35 +0000

“Enabled IO APIC” solution! Thank You!

By: dec

dec — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 20:34:41 +0000

slight issue of a blue screen……. i have files that I don’t want to lose what do i do do i attempt the restore???

By: benfrain

benfrain — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:34:51 +0000

A quick post to say thanks to Timothy Thompson and Martin Meldrum for the donations which I have sent to Christies. Kudos to you both. Glad the step by step helped you out.

By: benfrain

benfrain — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:35:31 +0000

Sorry, I don’t have access to any prior versions of VM Ware. I trust you have already emailed their support team to ask whether they have a download link for it?

By: Howard Sambol

Howard Sambol — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 09:12:12 +0000

I appreciate the clarity of your process. My specific challenge is that I need a trial copy of an earlier version of VMWare rather than the latest one which will not run on my 2006 vintage macbook. If anyone has any idea of where I can find one, that would be awesome. My Parallels VM I wish to convert is a version 3 hdd file. I’m already running VirtualBox successfully but would like to rescue my old XP VM is possible.

By: Marco

Marco — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:19:51 +0000

Great Tutorial! Thank you very much.

Worked like a charm. Only prob I ran into: Parallels messes with Windows paths in order to point it to shared folders. You can get the registry straight by hand, or you use Microsofts Fixit for that: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886549

By: rudi

rudi — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 10:09:31 +0000

Hi,

after updating to OS X Lion 10.7.1, I found out that parallels 4.0 didn’t work anymore (no 64 bit support) and as I didn’t want to spend money on an upgrade for parallels I came across this thread.

So I downloaded the latest trial version of parallels and was able to start up my VISTA ultimate virtual machine but had to fix hardware drivers, sound and network. Looks like the virtual components are named different in parallels 6. Did the same for my Ubuntu Linux machine and this worked fine.

I downloaded the latest trial version of VMware fusion and imported the virtual Vista machine. I started Vista and it needed a lot of new hardware drivers. Windows updates had to installed although this was not the case under parallels.After the updates I had a working system. Imported Ubuntu and this was working fine.

After copying the package contents I tried to start Vista under Virtual box and I am getting blue screens. Ubuntu is working fine.

Any help is appreciated

By: jolo

jolo — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:48:55 +0000

Thanks for the “Enabled IO APIC” solution! You, sir, rock!

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 02:48:12 +0000

Greetings,

I’m trying to migrate directly from VMware to VirtualBox, so this tutorial may not work, but I’m hoping it does. However, one issue may be that I don’t believe my VM was properly shut down before the trial expired. Perhaps, this has something to do with the error. I also noticed that there is a sleepimage that VMware left on my HD (close to 4GBs), so my guess is that I left it in a suspended state last time I used VMware to operate my VM. I’d really like to get on VirtualBox since it’s free.

When trying to read my hard .vmdk file, virtual box came up with the following error:

Callee RC:
NS_ERROR_CALL_FAILED (0x800706BE)

Any thoughts on this one?

Thanks in advance!

By: joao

joao — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 22:34:10 +0000

Hi,
I cannot find any pvs extention, only a .pvm which I tried and was accepted by VMWare Fusion demo. I have followed every step, but when I try ti run windows on the virtual machine it just shows an empty screen. I guess .pvm does not replace .pvs that easy, but leaves me thinking why it was accepted in the first place and took half an hour to process! Is there any turnaround that you know of?
thanks!

By: Al

Al — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 08:27:14 +0000

Is it necessary to remove Parallels tools? Some sites say it is. Will your method work with the newly released Vbox 4.0?

By: T. Payton

T. Payton — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:15:48 +0000

I having the same issue. No keyboard or mouse input. ;(

By: Sim

Sim — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:01:32 +0000

The virtual machine booted successfully in VirtualBox but won’t accept any keyboard or mouse inputs. Basically, I have a perfect XP in front of me except that I can’t do anything with it because it won’t accept any inputs. Any ideas?

A few actions out of the lines above:

1. After import the Parallels machine into VMware Fusion, I made it work under VMware and uninstalled Paralles tools.

2. During the booting under VMware, I installed numerous newly found hardware. However, I was careful enough that I did not install VMWare Tools.

Thanks.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:54:46 +0000

Just a question amongst this knowledgable bunch (and apologies for the slight deviation from topic)… this method does not work for running a bootcamp installation of Windows virtually, does it?

I.e, Am I able to use the above method in order to run a single Windows install on my macbook both with bootcamp AND virtualbox?

I suspect I will need to purchase Parallels or VMWare, but I would appreciate if someone more knowledgeable could confirm. Thanks!

By: Ismael Casimpan

Ismael Casimpan — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 06:14:17 +0000

Worked great on my end! Thank you so much!!

By the way, for those who aren’t really familiar with mac, the vmdk that you will have to use as a hard disk is within a package file. Assuming the parallels vm that you imported to vmware is named RHEL_VM, you have to right click on the said VM then choose “Show Package Contents”.

Hope this helps.

By: benfrain

benfrain — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 23:18:36 +0000

Excellent Jeremy, glad it helped.

By: Jeremy Gugenheim

Jeremy Gugenheim — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 23:17:04 +0000

I have tried a few methods found on the net today to transfer a Parallels 5 WinXP VM to VirtualBox on a Mac and have spent HOURS watching 24GB files transfer back and forth between my PC & Mac. Your method took well under an hour and worked (second time – after applying the IO APIC fix) and the whole thing happened on my Mac. Some of the names and dialogs have changed slightly with the latest versions but everything was obvious from what you had written. THANK YOU!!

By: benfrain

benfrain — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:32:24 +0000

Santiago, your welcome. Thanks for responding as well – good to know when it’s helped someone out.

By: Santiago

Santiago — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:02:10 +0000

Quick word of thanks, Ben.

Your instructions worked A-OK. I now have my vintage Parallels 2.x VM reincarnated as a VBox affair. Had lost the ability to run the creaky old version of Parallels after moving to Snow Leopard.

By: Rob Flaherty

Rob Flaherty — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 23:01:34 +0000

Thank you, thank you. This was an enormous help moving my VM off of Parallels.

Commenter Ben – Thanks for the “Enabled IO APIC” tip. Really saved the day!

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?