Physical to Virtual Migration

Here are some useful tools and instructions for converting a physical windows machine to virtual. This example was used to convert a physical Windows 2003 server to a VHD, which was mounted on a Windows 2012 Hyper-V server.

1. Run Disk2vhd utility from Microsoft. There are some nuances to this program:
     A) Run the utility from an external drive not being converted.
     B) Make sure to check the Virtual PC option.
2. Once the .vhd is created, create a new virtual machine and attach the .vhd. Start it up in Hyper-V.
   If the "BOOTMGR is missing" (which is likely)... STOP. 
3. Dismount the .vhd from Hyper-V at this point and use the following instructions and utilities. There are two options in these instructions for mounting the VHD. I use the process of just mounting the VHD as a drive. This can be done through  Admin Tools --> Computer Management --> Disk Management --> Action --> Attach VHD.
     A)  http://xtralogic.com/testdisk_rebuild_bootsector.shtml
     B)  http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download
4. Once the BOOTMGR is fixed, recreate the Hyper-V virtual machine and attach the .vhd.
   Make sure to add the hyper-v extensions/internals to the virtual machine under settings.
5. Start it up.You will now see multiple boot options, such as:
     A) disk2vhd
     B) Windows Server
6. Select the Windows Server boot option. You may only have 3 seconds to select this option.
7. The server may go through many HAL upgrade processes. At some point early on, back up your boot.ini file. Then go into boot.ini and increase the timeout and remove the boot option line related to disk2vhd. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323427
8.  If all goes well, you should start seeing drivers and hardware updating. Several restarts may be required.
9. Once upgrading is completed, go into network properties and configure the IP address, gateway, etc. Confirm that you now have internet connectivity.