Resizing XP Virtualmachine Boot Hard disk
We setup yet another proof of concept for Sun VDI with VMware ESX and Virtualcentre at the backend. VMware Virtualcentre was installed as a virtual machine as it is now supported by VMware.
The problem we had was that the initial VM that was built with the customers SOE on there was only created with a 8GB boot disk, so once you have Windows XP service pack 2, and then install service pack 3, and install MS Office and other basic applications you basically fill up the 8GB. So we needed to resize the hardisk without needed to rebuild the XP virtualmachine (as we had no XP CD handy).
So this is what we did:
- Shutdown the VM, then made a clone of it in case the process didn't work.
- Logged into Virtualcentre via the VMware client and then into Edit settings for that virtualmachine.
- Then went to the Hard Disk and then increased it's size to 14GB (or as required).
- Then started up the Virtualmachine again and logged as in Administrator.
- Downloaded EASEUS partition manager (basic edition is free to use for XP and Vista), and used that to increase the size of the C drive to expand to use the extra 6GB (ie. from 8GB to 14GB). This requires a couple of reboots but it the process works fine. You could use Parition Magic or Acronis Disk Director or any similar tool but EASEUS is the one we found first but is easy to use.
So that's it, I thought I would blog it just in case someone else needs to do this.
Posted at 10:49AM Mar 25, 2009 by sunraybruce in General |