Virtualizing Hardware For Testing

[thedocta45]

How difficult or even possible is it to emulate a specific laptop/computer as a virtual machine?

Is it simply as easy as pulling a VHD from the physical hardware and deploying it to a virtual machine?

I need to test driver and hardware compatibility with software.

 

[Quix]

The short answer is, you can't.

VMs don't emulate a specific set of hardware, they emulate a specific (as configured) fake set of hardware and most VMs only actually support emulating or two video controllers and one or two types of storage controllers, etc. If you need a VM to emulate, say a i5-2500K with a Geforce 6600 GT and a specific SCSI controller you're not going to get that.

 

[thedocta45]

Yeah I had the feeling that that was the case. I guess that rules a VM out as far as hardware/driver compatibility is concerned, I guess all it can test then is the viability of the base Windows image against software and software packaging.