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tbranham
September 20th, 2007, 07:02 PM
Hey cats & kittens,

I'm trying to get WinXP running in VMware (sick, I know...), but I'm running into an annoying little problem.

Here's what I've done:

I created a new VM in VMware Server -- no problem. I threw in the recovery DVD for my laptop (Sony VAIO) and fired it up. OK, it finds the DVD and boots. Everything seems cool...

...until I get a dialog box that says "Cannot use this recovery disk for this computer. Confirm the model type." Whoops.

So, it seems as if the recovery DVD is bound to the hardware (30 seconds on google confirms this fact), but the question is whether or not I can work around this. I've played around with some of the settings, but I don't have any idea what the recovery app could be keying off to verify the (virtual) hardware.

This is NOT a pressing issue or anything -- I've got a virgin XP CD around the house somewhere -- but it is annoying as hell. I'm just trying to find out if anybody else has been able to get this to work.

I don't think it matters, but I'm running Feisty and the latest VMware Server in the repo's.

Any ideas?

UPDATE:
I went ahead and installed XP Pro from the real msft disk. No issues whatsoever. So, it really is just the VAIO recovery utility not recognizing the hardware; however, I'd still like to get this method working. Any thoughts are appreciated.

ddrichardson
September 21st, 2007, 08:59 PM
If it's tied to the hardware then you're pretty scuppered. The only thing I can think of to try is to find if there is a way to circumvent it and streamline it into a new disk.

tbranham
September 22nd, 2007, 01:46 AM
Yeah, that's kinda' what I was thinking. I'm still trying to find a solution, but I'm not holding my breath.

As an aside, I am completely amazed at the speed I'm getting out of XP through VMware. The mouse is a little jumpy at times, but otherwise it seems to run quite a bit faster than it did when I had it installed the conventional way. No kidding.

Anyway, thanks for your insight. I'm going to do some more digging.