Help needed changing Windows OS on a virtual machine
Thread poster: Madeleine MacRae Klintebo
Madeleine MacRae Klintebo
Madeleine MacRae Klintebo  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:24
Swedish to English
+ ...
Mar 27, 2011

I’m trying to change the OS on my bootcamp partition (using VMware) from Windows XP to Windows 7.

After having to re-format the disk from FAT32 to NTFS, I at last thought it would work. Only, I continued getting warnings about there not being enough free space (total almost 32GB with around 7GB free). I was silly enough to think this would be inconsequential as I was doing a clean install which logically would release all the space used by XP and any installed programs. But no, I
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I’m trying to change the OS on my bootcamp partition (using VMware) from Windows XP to Windows 7.

After having to re-format the disk from FAT32 to NTFS, I at last thought it would work. Only, I continued getting warnings about there not being enough free space (total almost 32GB with around 7GB free). I was silly enough to think this would be inconsequential as I was doing a clean install which logically would release all the space used by XP and any installed programs. But no, I had to remove a large number of programs from the old OS to free up 16GB for Windows 7.

Eventually everything appeared to work and Windows 7 was installed and opened up. Then I closed VMware down and tried to open it again only to get a message about it being unable to open the disk with the reason given as: ”The partition table on the physical disk has changed since the disk was created. Remove the physical drive from the virtual machine, then add it again.”

A bit confusing as there isn’t actually a ”physical” disk, but I right-clicked the disk, named ”Windows”, on my desktop and selected to eject it. Didn’t work even though I restarted the laptop. Instead I now have a disk image on my desktop named ”Untitled”.

Where do I go from here? All ideas greatly appreciated. Should I remove VMware and reinstall it before, again, installing Windows 7? I’m always a bit uncomfortable with removing programs when I haven’t got a CD to use for reinstallation. I have, of course, made a note of the serial number.
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Cetacea
Cetacea  Identity Verified
Switzerland
Local time: 00:24
English to German
+ ...
Reinstall Mar 28, 2011

Madeleine MacRae Klintebo wrote:
Where do I go from here? All ideas greatly appreciated. Should I remove VMware and reinstall it before, again, installing Windows 7? I’m always a bit uncomfortable with removing programs when I haven’t got a CD to use for reinstallation. I have, of course, made a note of the serial number.


Removing and reinstalling is usually the best solution when messages like that start to pop up, but I understand that you hesitate to do so. Maybe your local Mac Technician or possibly a "Genius" has a better solution?


 


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Help needed changing Windows OS on a virtual machine






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