Everyone can make a mistake and build a virtual machine

on a Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2.

Soon you will discover that you made the wrong choice

and want to convert this virtual machine to the VMware VMDK virtual disk format. Arne Fokkema the Dutch ICT-Freak created a little how to and I translated his document. With the latest version of Winimage (8.10) you can convert the VDH virtual disk format to a VMDK virtual disk file. In this case we are going to convert a Longhorn Beta 3 (Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2) virtual machine to a VMware virtual machine.

Start WinImage. And choose the menu option “Disk”.

Now click the Convert Virtual Hard Disk image option and open select the VDH file.

Now select the option “Create Fixed Size Virtual Hard Disk” and click <OK>.

Give your new VMDK file a name and click on <Save>.

The conversion will start.

After this conversion you can start your Longhorn server. The last step is installing the VMware tools and your server is converted.

Happy converting and many thanks to Arne Fokkema.