How to move virtual hard disk of XP Mode virtual machine
When you install XP Mode on Windows 7 by default all the virtual machine files are saved under “%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\”. The file that has *.vhd extension is a virtual hard disk file. Recently, I had to move the vhd file to another drive and I accomplished it this way:
1) Run Windows XP Mode virtual machine and go to Tools –> Settings
2) Then select Close and in the right side click “Prompt for action”
3) Click OK and close virtual machine. This time when you close it the following window will appear:
4) Select Shut down and click OK. The virtual machine will shutdown.
5) Now, click Start button, enter the following path:“%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\” without quotation marks and hit Enter.
6) This will open the folder where the virtual machine file reside. Move the vhd file to desired location by cutting and pasting.
7) Once done moving the file, open the ‘vmc’ file with Notepad, which is a configuration file of the virtual machine. VMC file is an xml formatted file containing configuration of the virtual machine. Find the line that refers to vhd file location. For example “XP Mode.vhd” with the full path in front of it. Modify the path accordingly to point to a new location:
Now you may start the XP mode virtual machine.
