Hi Krister, Well you can exchange files between 2 virtual windows machines, yes. You can not easily transfer all your apps. You would need to reinstall them in windows 7. What you can do however, is transfer data from the old xp vm to the new win7 vm, using file sharing built in to vmware fusion. For those who don't know how to set that up, it's easy. Here's how to do it.
First off, what I'm describing here solves the following problem. The windows vm in fact running on your mac. Beside having normal access to a c drive in windows, it is sometimes desirable to have access not just to the windows drive, but also to other files, stored on your mac, outside the virtual windows machine. For instance, if you have stuff in your mac documents folder, then usually, and especially if you installed windows "more isolated" during installation inside fusion, it is not so obvious how to get windows access to your mac documents folder. In windows, you can see your c drive, and other external disks you attach after windows was started, but how can you access the mac downloads folder, the mac documents folder, or, for that matter, any other files that your mac has access to, but windows has not. This is where fusion's sharing options come in handy. If you enable sharing, which is an option in the toolbar in fusion, then you can select which folders from the mac file system you want to make available in windows. Once fusion knows which folders to show to windows, they will appear as a network drive inside windows. Normally, to access a network drive in windows xp, you would go into the my network places on the desktop, then entire network, then your workgroup, then the machine where you want to access a share, and then you would click on the share itself. This way you can have access to files on another windows machine's hard disk. Now back to your mac shared folders, they will be accessible through in a similar fashion. On your xp desktop, a new icon will appear called vmware shared folders. Fusion installs that icon on your windows desktop if you turn on sharing in fusion and then ad 1 or more folders. To access your mac data from windows, simply open this vmware shared icon from the desktop and you will see the name of each folder you shared. If you go into one of these, the files stored on your mac's hard drive will be accessible in xp. So what you can do from then on, is save all files that you want to retain from xp into a folder on your mac, so that the data resides outside all virtual machines. Later, when inside windows 7, you can share the same folder over to windows 7 using fusion, and pull the data back in. It's easiest to do this with your documents. Then you have your favorites, which will also work I think, but I haven't tried that myself. If you were using outlook express in xp and you want to move your mail data to windows 7, you're faced with a new problem, because you will be forced to use anything other than outlook express. OE is no longer present in windows 7. Windows live mail is an option, because you can also pull in your address book if you want. Finally, to enable sharing in fusion for a particular vm, do the following. Open fusion, make sure the vm is loaded. It doesn't matter whether or not it boots up, but it's easier, voiceover wise, if the vm is not running. Then hit command e to access the vm settings. The settings window appears. After the add device button, there is what voiceover calls a scroll area. Interact with that and click on sharing. The sharing dialog appears. This is a very simple interface, with a listbox and 2 buttons. The first button is add, the second is remove. Hit add, then browse to, and put your cursor on, the folder you want to share, and hit add. Then hit command w to close the settings window. Now, if you fire up windows, you will find your mac stuff in the vmware shared folders icon on the desktop. Note: if you have difficulty finding your way to the folder you want to share, remember this. Go over to the list or column view and don't go into the sidebar. To go up 1 level, hit command up arrow. So if you're inside your mac documents folder and you want to go 1 level up, to your home directory where you have documents downloads etc, hit command up. To dive into a folder, hit command down arrow. Hth, Paul. --- > Hi all, > I have Vmware Fusion with one virtual XP machine and one windows 7 machine. I > wonder if it is at all possible to transfer the contents of the XP machine to > the one with Win7 in a way that preserves the functionality of installed apps > etc? > Thanks for any help. > /Krister > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. 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