Well, I don't wish to make absolute claims here, but I very much doubt
it. One reason being that MS (unless installed from a stand alone
version) is hardwired to run on the specific hardware it came bundled
with, but MS restrictions not withstanding (I also don't believe) there
is any utility that currently does this within VMware.

A better approach might be to copy everything of interest off to an
external drive, then attach that drive to the new Virtual Machine and
copy everything from it onto the local drive. This would work fine for
data files and such, but MicroSloth goes out of its way to make the
applications (unlike Linux) difficult to install. My guess would be
that you need to rerun the installer programs - and some of the new
application installers might object to being installed on a machine
(virtual or otherwise) that wasn't connected to the network.

Of course, the best approach is to avoid using such a blatantly inferior
OS in the first place, and there are free utilities such as "wine" that
supposedly can run Windoze binaries directly from within Linux, but I
personally do not have any experience with them. I would suggest
asking one of the Linux support groups about that.

If you do go with Linux as your base OS, I think you should make sure to
download the Mozilla "FireFox" browser and "Thunderbird" emailer apps,
as well as the free "Open Office" suite of tools (an editor that can
handle almost any standard file type including the various MS Word
files, a spread sheet that can handle Excel as well as other file types,
Drawing programs, photoshop like programs, etc. All for free. Oh,
BTW, there are MS based version of all these tools as well. Check out
http://www.mozilla.org and http://www.openoffice.org (be sure to use
the .org ending)

Also, as for particular versions of Linux, I would recommend the Redhat
Fedora Core4 version. If you decide to go that route, I suggest you
download the DVD install disk (instead of the 4 CD ROMs). I found this
to be far easier when installing the system. Check out
http://www.fedora.redhat.com/download/

One warning. If you start using a UNIX based operating system for any
length of time you will find yourself wondering why it isn't crashing
periodically. Do not be alarmed, there is also an MS crash simulator
that you can install which will randomly put of a simulated blue screen
of death allowing you to feel more at home. Over time you can ween
yourself off of the need to see this pacifier.

In a world without fences, who needs Gates?

Cheers,

Robb


Wayne.B wrote:

Robb, as a point of interest, could you make an image copy of your
present MS OS hard disk, and then boot that up under VM?