Comments on: convert .vhd (VirtualPc) files into .vdi (VirtualBox) files

By: ld

ld — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:38:31 +0000

Thanks for the helpful hints here.

With Ubuntu 9.10 you can install QEMU directly from Ubuntu Software Center. Above instruction needs to change a bit to show “VBoxManage” for the non-OSE instead of “vboxmanage” which seems to be part of OSE edition.

I did this with VBox 3.1.4 and so far looks good.

By: remy

remy — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:12:06 +0000

thx, I’ve updated it.

By: geek

geek — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:39:04 +0000

The url for qemu has changed – redo the hyperlink!

By: KVM, disk formats and disposable computing — Somewhere out there!

KVM, disk formats and disposable computing — Somewhere out there! — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 22:16:13 +0000

[...] convert .vhd (VirtualPc) files into .vdi (VirtualBox) files [...]

By: convert .vhd (virtualpc) file to .vdi (virtualbox) format [updated] « Willing wheels

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:19:20 +0000

[...] note: this is an update of the 1-year old previous post convert .vhd (VirtualPc) files into .vdi (VirtualBox) files [...]

By: fuckthecaptcha

fuckthecaptcha — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:05:19 +0000

It’s against EULA to use it at all without valid Windows license.

Microsoft wants you to use it only with their own virtualisation products, which in turn have EULAs forbidding use of non-Windows hosts.

By: antiban

antiban — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 20:38:20 +0000

big thanks!!

By: remy

remy — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 10:56:09 +0000

Hi Martin, thanks for sharing the information!
Indeed it’s against Microsoft EULA to do this, so if you do it, make it at your own risk.

I’ll try to abstract the post a bit more
++ Remy

By: Martin Kalén

Martin Kalén — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:40:22 +0000

From §1 of the VPC_EULA.txt of an XP SP3 + IE7 testing appliance:

“You may install and use one copy of the software on your device of which you are running a validly licensed copy of Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Virtual Server. You may not change or convert the virtual hard disk image from the VHD format.”

Your guide contains excellent generic instructions for converting a dynamic sized VHD to VDI-format which in itself is perfectly legal. Why don’t you just “generify” some filenames?

On a side note, it seems that VBoxManage would have been able to do the conversion in a one-shot operation if the VHD had been fixed size:
VBoxManage convertdd fixeddisk.vhd fixeddisk.vdi

By: remy

remy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:52:11 +0000

Fred, thanks for your warning.
I tried to find more information but could not find against which end-user license agreement (EULA) it goes against. If it’s for running windows in a virtual machine, I don’t think so since I used versions delivered by microsoft itself, with limited lifetime (sthg like 1 month) which they said themselves was free to use.
If it’s for converting one file format into another, I did not find anything into EULA.

In any case, you’re right to put a warning. if you have more detailed information, feel free to share!