Migrating Existing Windows Host into Guest

I'm going to buy a new system with Windows XP Pro running on it. As soon as that system comes in, I'd like to migrate the pre-installed OS to a guest OS to provide an additional layer of security and stability, plus give me the ability to recover to my own guest image "recovery point" if needed.

What is the easiest way to accomplish the migration of an installed Windows OS to a guest OS? The Parallels Image Tool wants to copy the entire hard drive to an image, including the empty sectors which isn't at all useful for doing what I want.

Thanks in advance.

jack

 

Just to clarify, my intention is to migrate the XP Pro into a virtual OS and then install Linux as the host OS. (One could buy a second copy of Windows for the guest OS, but I don't think we should reward Microsoft's punitive policies toward virtualization.)

 

We have a special tool called "Parallels Transporter" - it is specifically designed for that purpose.

 

Thanks for the tip!

I'm not sure why I haven't seen anything about this, except that it appears to be marketed mainly at the Mac users (I'm one of those, too).

I'll investigate further ...

Jack