Virtualization

[ImaNihilist]

I *believe* the converter will take care of that. Most VMware VMs seem to be controlled by simple text files which tell it what hardware to emulate, and what what settings. I'd suspect that the VMware converter should set that all up for you.

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

Can't hurt to try.

Also, if you run into trouble you can stop by on the community forums and there's always someone around there who can help you get it up and running.

And IMO, you are definitely thinking on the right track here. Going with a VM is the way to go. Get away from hardware dependence. When I recently migrated over a server from Windows NT to Windows 2k3 I didn't even think about doing it in a VM. Definitely should have done that instead for portability reasons alone. Unless you need speed or have specific hardware needs, you might as well go with a VM. I mean, we were running Windows NT on an old PII 266MHz.