Hello all, here's one for the computer gurus.

Here is the scenario:

I have a notebook which at present I connect to my work network intranet (network A). Our company is in transition from one network to another (network B) and during the transition I can at the moment only connect to network B via an SSL-VPN. To fully use netowkr B, I need to have a different OS/image on the machine. So what I plan to do is use VMWare or similar to create an image of the present OS and machine settings and use it via the virtual management software to be able to run it on a machine which can connect to network B so I can use one machine to connect to either network.

My questions are, do I make an ISO image of my present machine or some other file/image? Also, what software do I need to be able to use the image as I have outlined above? (i.e. there are various packages such as VMWare Workstation, VMWare Server etc.)

If anyone knows of any good software out there I can use that won't cost me an arm and a leg I would be most grateful.

Thanks guys

JB

I use Virtualbox for legacy software products that are incompatible with 7 x64. Setup etc couldn't have been simpler as still had a licensed copy of XP spare. Worth a look? I see no reason why you couldn't ghost your existing machine and copy it into the "Virtual disk" that a virtual box machine creates.

[Edited on 18/8/11 by SeaBass]

I did hear about VirtualBox but not looked into it yet (no pun intended )

I did wonder if I could use a USB drive to hold the image and run it from there?

I use Virtualbox to run Windoze XP on a linux box - it's a good reliable product (thanks to whoever pointed me to that about 6 months ago!)

I had VMWare on a works PC and it was rubbish.

I dont know if it was the way it was setup or VMWare itself but the laptop was sooo slow it was unuseable.

MMMMMMM ???I wonder what they are talking about.
Denis the technophobe.

VMWare have a tool to allow you to image a real machine, P2V but Virtualbox is faster / better.

I use Vmware to run Winblows XP so I can develop PLC code at work- Runs on a ubuntu 10.10 Laptop

With virtual box download the version from Sun rather than the community supported version as the USB support actually works.