I have recently purchased StorageCraft ShadowProtect Desktop edition. From the information I read about ShadowProtect, one of the main featrues I liked about it was the ability to run ShadowProtect backup images as virtual machines in VMware Player. Maybe I missunderstood the how the process works, or maybe I have not implemented the instructions properly. I am hoping someone can offer guidance on this. Here is what I did: On my external USB drive is a ShadowProtect backup named Tecra_M7_C_Drive-b003.spf. In the same folder are several incremental backups as well. I downloaded VMware Player version 2.5.1. After installing and runnign VMware Player I clicked the button that said, "Open". Then I browsed to Tecra_M7_C_Drive-b003.spf and clicked "Open". VMware Player went throught the process of opening the image. After the process was complete there was only a blank, black screen with VMware Player. After a few seconds a message appears saying, "Could not connect to floppy "A:"". Then the screen remains black but now there are random underscore bars flashing around on the screen. The only thing I can do at this point is close the VMware Player. Does anyone have any input on what I may have done wrong?

VMware Player is designed to place VMware virtual machines, rather than directly play backup images.

If you import a ShadowProtect backup image into VMware Workstation, or the free VMware Server, you can then save the virtual machine file. You should then be able to "play" the virtual machine using the VMware Player. With ShadowProtect you have two options to help import a backup image into VMware. One is to use the VMware import.conversion tool. The second is to boot a virtual machine with the ShadowProtect Recovery Environment CD and use that to restore the backup to the virtual drive in the virtual machine.

 

 Hi Danny,

I recently tried using VMWare Player and their VMWare Converter to install a SPD image of a Win98SE system in a virtual machine. I could not make it work for some reason. I find the whole virtual machine thing rather confusing and really do not understand the process well at all. I gave up on VMWare because I wanted something free and I understood that their free VMWare Server could only be installed on a server OS, which I do not have. Anyway, I finally used Microsoft's free Virtual PC 2004 (there's a 2007 version out), created a blank virtual machine based on Win98, booted the SPD CD within that virtual machine and restored a Win98SE image to the virtrual disk. That all worked slick. Upon booting the 98 system, Windows found all the different hardware that was inherent in the virtual machine and installed everything automatically. I don't know how this would work with an XP or Vista OS in a virtual machine. Presumably, after the restoration, you'd have to run HIR on it from the VistaPE recommended environment in order to get it to boot at all. Of course, you'd have to have SPD installed (not necessarily activated) previously on the OS in the image for that to work. Activation/licensing may or may not be a problem with those OS's in virtual machines, I don't know.

Rod

Thanks for the two forum members who responded. I now realize my mistake. I thought that I could just start VMware Player and point it to a ShadowProtect image and load the image directly and simply from withing VMware player. Now I realize that the process doesn't work that way. I tried using VMware Converter. I converted a ShadowProtect image, but when I tried to open the converted file in VMware player, I got an error. So, now I have given up on the idea. There may be a way to do it somehow with free software, but I think there are basically two options and neither of them are desirable for me: A) follow a complicated and convoluted process using free software or B) purchaes VMware Workstation.