Someone should make a tool where when it runs it analyzes an arbitrary computer system and then captures these "exact" hardware specs (CPU type, speed, cache, Memory, power-levels,etc) to be precisely simulated in a virtual environment on another completely different PC.

The problem with Virtual PC or VMWare Workstation is that they are used for emulating Operating System environments. This tool is to simulate an actual "existing" computer system (minus the software and minus the hardware problems existing in it -- this tool just captures specs about the hardware).

This would be useful for technicians who would now not need to take customer's PC away for long periods for problems such as random HDD faults (HDD is dying). The customer could keep their original systems (with their hardware problems) but the technician could simulate the customer's system's hardware specs in a virtual environment and then buy a new hard drive and reinstall the OS and apps in this Virtual environment and when completed just go to the customers house and replace the damaged HDD. At present it is not possible to just take one HDD from one computer system (boot drive) and place it in a different system which has a different mobo/cpu because of Geometry issues. This is why it would be useful to have such a tool.
-- quantass, Oct 13 2005

This sounds like a good idea but impossibly difficult. Then again computers can already do lots of stuff that seems impossibly difficult. What do the clever people reckon?
-- wagster, Oct 13 2005


// At present it is not possible to just take one HDD from one computer system (boot drive) and place it in a different system which has a different mobo/cpu because of Geometry issues. //

? Geometry issues? How does geometry have anything to do with it?

I've taken a boot disk from one system and installed it in another system with little problem (WinXP). The plug-and-play recognized unfamiliar hardware, started in "safe mode", and requested that I insert the installation disk so that it could load all the appropriate drivers. ten minutes later, all was well again.

How would a system simulation capture and replicate random (or non-random) hardware faults? How would it capture incompatibilities due to unknown hardware/software bugs? Sorry, sounds like magic to me, unless you have some way to do this.
-- Freefall, Oct 13 2005



random, halfbakery