It can copy the physical machine to a Parallels virtual machine file on an external drive, or you can transfer it to a Mac running Parallels over a local network.ĭownload the Parallels Transporter Agent application from Parallels and run it on your Windows or Linux system. Parallels offers their own tool known as “ Parallels Transporter Agent.” This utility can be installed on either Windows or Linux, and it can convert a physical system to a virtual machine for use in the Parallels virtual machine application for Macs. It’ll create a copy of the running Windows system as a VHD file, and you can take that VHD file to another computer and run it in Hyper-V - the converted physical system should boot up just fine as long as you launch it in Microsoft’s own Hyper-V virtual machine software. You’ll be able to select which partitions and drives you want to include in the VHD file. Run this tool on the Windows system you want to convert. This utility will convert a running Windows system to a VHD (virtual hard drive) file for use in Microsoft’s virtual machine products, such as the Hyper-V virtual machine tool included with professional versions of Windows 8 and 8.1. Microsoft offers a Disk2vhd tool - one of their many useful SysInternals utilities. RELATED: How to Create and Run Virtual Machines With Hyper-V Save that virtual machine to an external hard drive and boot it up on a different computer. The utility will then create a virtual machine from the current Windows system, modifying it so it will boot properly in a virtual machine program.

Choose a VMware Workstation, VMware Player, or VMware Fusion virtual machine as the destination and configure the options for the virtual machine.

Click the “Convert machine” button on the toolbar and select the current, powered-on computer as the source. Download vCenter Converter from VMware and launch it on the computer you want to turn into a virtual machine.

Windows vm on mac external drives