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Can I run a .vdi file for Windows 8.1. virtual machine in KVM/QEMU or VMM? Do I need to convert the file from .vdi to some format familiar to KVM/QEMU? What are the steps, if possible?

I have VirtualBox and a Windows 8.1 virtual machine .vdi file created under VirtualBox in a computer. I have KVM/QEMU and VMM in another computer. Both computers run Lubuntu 18.04 as host OS. I am considering to copy the .vdi file to the second computer and run it there. I remember Windows 8.1 in the .vdi file has been activated by a product key. Will I be able to have the two Windows 8.1 virtual machines without problem?

Thanks.

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QEMU can use a VirtualBox-format disk image directly. You can convert them to a “QEMU-native” format if you prefer, using qemu-img:

qemu-img convert -O qcow2 yourimage.vdi yourimage.qcow2

The fact that QEMU can read such disk images doesn’t necessarily mean that the VM itself will work as it would in VirtualBox; for example, the VirtualBox images of Windows which Microsoft provides for browser testing tend not to work all that well in QEMU with the original disk images, but work fine when converted to qcow2 format.

Will I be able to have the two Windows 8.1 virtual machines without problem?

That’s a Windows-specific question, to which I don’t know the answer; you should ask it on a more appropriate Stack Exchange.

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