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My windows 7 laptop had a motherboard issue but the removed HDD is still good. I want to create a bootable ISO-image of the windows-7 installation on this now external HDD that I can connect via USB to a Windows-11 laptop on which I have installed Microsoft windows Hyper-V virtual machine software. Hopefully this will allow me to run the programs that were on the windows 7 laptop using the virtual machine. These programs include over 10 years of tax software, 3-D Cad, etc. I have 64GB of RAM, a 1TB VME C drive, a new installed 1TB VME split into 500 GB D and E drives and a new installed 2TB SSD split into 1 TB F and G drives.

How do I go about creating the ISO-file from the installation that was in the windows 7 laptop? I could copy the installation over to one of the hard drives and make the ISO from there if that makes sense. If I moved it how would I do it so that the bootable ISO could then be created?

gardenerbob
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  • Try VMware converter P2V https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2005129 – John Jan 31 '24 at 23:07
  • Are you perhaps misunderstanding things a little bit? I think @John is correct. Installation is only done for new software/OS. From your question I think that you are not trying to INSTALL Windows 7, but to convert ("Physical to Virtual" or P2V) your Windows 7 formerly physical machine to a virtual machine. I recommend you look at the link John gave, as well as just generally research converting a physical computer to a VM. – music2myear Feb 01 '24 at 00:42
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    Does this answer your question? Is it possible to convert physical environments to virtual machines – music2myear Feb 01 '24 at 00:42
  • BTW, before making any changes, make a full disk image of that drive, since it has valued files and data. That can easily be done from an external drive adapter. – DrMoishe Pippik Feb 01 '24 at 00:46
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    Yes, using the VMWare Converter tool is the best way to take a HDD and create a VM. It doesn’t mean it will be bootable and it definitely will it NOT be licensed. Since Windows 7 licenses are no longer sold by legitimate sellers it will remain in that state – Ramhound Feb 01 '24 at 01:01
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    In summary, your question is correct and about something that many have done in the past and still do for various reasons and purposes. But your idea about "bootable ISO" is wrong or ate least misguided or just stemming from a confusion between an image file and "ISO". The latter is indeed a drive image file that originally was intend for optical media only. It's not the format you need to run in virtualization software. – ChanganAuto Feb 01 '24 at 22:07

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