Wednesday, January 26, 2011

How to Migrate a XP(32 Bit) PC to New Windows 7 Home (64 Bit) PC

I used this method to transition from my old XP PC to my New Windows 7 PC. Instead of keeping two physical PC’s connected and on your desk while you transition from XP to Windows 7, this method allows you to virtualize the old PC and host it on your new Windows 7 PC.  This enables you to continue using all your old programs, data and settings until you have time to re-install and customise them on your new PC.

There will always be some program, file or settings that you will have forgotten to migrate to the new PC and you can easily refer back to the old PC through the virtual session, even six months later. Some 32 bit programs may not even run on Windows 7 64bit. You can continue to run them in your old visualized PC.

Windows 7 has its own virtualization capability but your need to have Window 7 Professional or a add in product that costs quite a bit. If your have Windows 7 Home version like most people, then using VMware’s free products overcomes this.

After virtualizing my old PC that was five years old onto my new Windows 7 host I found that it ran faster than the physical box itself.

Here is how I did it.

First download and install VMware Converter from http://www.vmware.com/products/converter to your Windows system (the XP box that you want to convert into a virtual machine) and start the installation by double-clicking on the downloaded file.

The program is a 32 bit standalone exe, and installs to “C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone\converter.exe”.

Under Windows 7 it installs to "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone\converter.exe”

Start the “VMware vCentre Converter Standalone Client” program from the Start\VMware program group on the Windows XP machine and use the “Convert Machine” wizard to create a virtual machine file. The resultant file will have a .vmx extension.

Copy or move the resultant vmx file to your Windows 7 PC.

Now you will need to download the VMware Player from http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ and install it on your Windows 7 machine.

The program installs at "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\vmplayer.exe".

To run your old XP PC, start the VMware Player and open the .vmx file you created with the converter.

Here is an alternate method I found on the Internet.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Floods, or High Tide of Irrationality?

After reading this article about the incompetence of the Brisbane city council in respect of issuing building permits to build in a known flood zone. I was struck by the irony of the recent actions of shire councils around Australia, refusing building permits on the basis of speculative sea level rise estimates produced by global warming alarmists.

I subsequently found the following post by Jamez on Jo Nova's blog that sums up the situation succinctly.

All the shire councils know what the water levels were in 1974 and other floods before them. It was therefore a fair and reasonable call that at some time in the future those water levels would be reached again. So a responsible government has two choices, don’t let people build in areas which are clearly flood prone, or take flood mitigation measures to ensure those water levels can’t be reached again. Or a combination of both.
For a dam to provide flood mitigation it needs to carry at most 50% of maximum capacity to enable it to take up large flows when they happen. So lots of dams are needed for serious flood mitigation. They built the Wivenhoe Dam, but not much else. In fact one expert was suggesting a number of dams had been decommissioned in Queensland. It also appears as Jo has pointed out, that Wivenhoe may have been lacking proper flood mitigation procedures.
The irony is that Shire Councils around Australia have been refusing building and development applications on the basis of the IPCC/CSIRO sea level rise estimates, saying it would be foolhardy to allow building in areas which could be under threat from rising sea levels. We are also being told we need a carbon tax and we need to take all sorts of climate change mitigation action.
So as a society we take more action on hotly debated speculation about possible sea level rises, than we do on the known likelihood of flooding in certain areas. Dumb huh?

Dumb indeed! Is there no end to the stupid follies imposed on us by PC "Seeming" Utopian Bureaucrats.