Convert VMWare Images to Virtual PC 2004
Updated 4/30/2004
Please read this first: In the short few months that this has existed on my site, I have received over 1800 hits for this article specifically. I didn’t think there was such a big demand for this. I was just “curious“ to see if it could be done. As much as I would like this to work EVERY TIME, it does not. There are too many variables at work here. Read through the comments and this post and give these things a try, but I’m not guaranteeing that you are going to be successful. It may not be possible to convert your images to VPC and you may have to start for scratch. I hope this at least helps and you find it valuable. Continue to send me e-mail and I’ll do my best to answer questions as they come up – it may take me a few days, but I’ll at least acknowledge your mail. I don’t have all the answers, just some crazy ideas. 
There are two solutions (that I have found anyway) for converting VMware images into Virtual PC. These may not work in all cases – but several people have had success with both methods. It’s worth a try…
Solution 1 – Transfer a VMware Image
This solution is designed to transfer your host machines hard disk (or partition) into a Virtual Machine; this method also works from inside a VMware Virtual Machine as detailed below.
Note: If you are transferring a non-boot partition, a simpler process would be to simply file copy the disk from within the VMware Virtual Machine to the host and then back into a Virtual PC Virtual Machine
At this point you have a Virtual PC disk file in the root of the VMWare Virtual Machine – it doesn’t actually contain the data form the VMWare disk. To convert the VMWare Disk to the Virtual PC Disk, continue on.
Once you’re finished with the wizard, the conversion procedure will start. This is a very long process depending on how much data you have. The time it takes to finish this step depends on how big the source drive is.
NOTE: I have found one “known“ issue with this – specifically in Windows (2K, XP, WS03). In some cases, the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) that is installed in a VMWare virtual machine IS NOT compatible with Virtual PC. The most common way this shows itself is that when you boot the newly converted PC the first time, you get a black screen and it does nothing or you get the good ‘ole Windows “Blue Screen of Death“. Here is one way I have found to possibly fix this. If this doesn’t work, you aren’t going to be able to convert your image. The only way to change the HAL in Windows is to reinstall.
Solution 2 – Ghost a VMware Image
You can either use PowerQuest or Ghost to do the conversion this way. Essentially, you are going to “image“ a VMWare disk and then restore it into a new VPC machine.
Creating a PowerQuest image of an existing VMware disk
For VMWare version 4, If the original image was created with VMware workstation 4 you will have to apply an additional step as VMware v4 uses a different HAL (hardware abstraction layer) than version 3 and Virtual PC. The following has been tested with Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP, it is expected to work with Windows Server 2000 but I’m not sure.
Before attempting to create a PowerQuest image of the existing VMware v4 disk
Extract the original HAL and Kernel from your original Windows CD Copy them to your Vmware image under a new name. Add a line to your boot.ini file with HAL= and KERNEL= . See http://www.vmware.com/support/gsx25/doc/disks_dual-boot_acpi_gsx.html for more information.
Once the image file has been created, you are ready to restore to a new Virtual PC.
Restoring a Drive Image Pro (.pqi) image into a new Virtual PC
You will need a bootable floppy disk that contains the PowerQuest Drive Image Pro program.
Vmware also have a tool to go the other way.
http://www.vmware.com/download/vmimporter.html