Client has a legacy Visual FoxPro application running on a Windows Server 2008 R2. The application is no longer being used, but it contains valuable historical data that they want to retain. I could run Disk2vhd and be done. However, it is on a production server that has two large file shares and other services running on the server. I really don't want to copy all the things that aren't needed for the application.

I checked for ODBC connection, and there wasn't any. So, let's just copy the application folder and its dependencies to a new VM named LegacyVM.

Here is what we're looking at

Old Server: OLDSERVER
New Server: LegacyVM
VM Host   : VHOST01

Create a new Windows Server 2008 R2 VM
Open an elevated PowerShell ISE
Connect to the newly created Hyper-V Server 2019, which is named HOST01

Enter-PSSession -ComputerName HOST01 -Credential domain-admin

Find the VMSwitch name that we will use for this VM

Get-VMSwitch

I'm getting this output

Name                    SwitchType NetAdapterInterfaceDescription
----                    ---------- ------------------------------
externalSwitch          External   Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet #1

So externalSwitch is what I will use.

I'm going to create a script for creating Hyper-V VM on this brand new Hyper-V Server 2019.

New-Item 'D:\Scripts' -ItemType Directory
New-Item 'D:\Scripts\LegacyApp.ps1' -ItemType file

Edit this script in PowerShell ISE

PSEdit D:\Scripts\NewVM.ps1

I would need to specify the VM to be Generation 1 since I will install Windows Server 2008 R2 on it.

# Set VM Name, Switch Name, and Installation Media Path.
$VMName = 'LegacyApp'
$Switch = 'externalSwitch'
$InstallMedia = 'D:\ISO\W2008R2.ISO'
$VMPath = 'D:\Hyper-V\'
$VHDPath = 'Virtual Hard Disks'

# Create New Virtual Machine and store all files in the same directory
New-VM -Name $VMName -MemoryStartupBytes 4GB -Generation 1 -Path "$VMPath" `
-NewVHDPath "$VMPath\$VMName\$VHDPath\$VMName.vhdx" -NewVHDSizeBytes 150GB -SwitchName $Switch

# Specify ISO to boot the VM
Add-VMDvdDrive -VMName $VMName -Path $InstallMedia

#Start the VM
Start-VM -VMName $VMName

Post Operating System Installation

I'm going to run the following PowerShell commands

#Enable Ping
Set-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName “File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request – ICMPv4-In)” -enabled True

#Get InterfaceIndex value
Get-NetAdapter -Name * | Format-Table –AutoSize

#Configure static IP - Use the InterfaceIndex value from the command above.
New-NetIPAddress –InterfaceIndex 5 –IPAddress 192.168.1.6 -PrefixLength 24 -DefaultGateway 192.168.1.1

#Configure DNS - Again, use the same InterfaceIndex value as above
Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceIndex 6 -ServerAddresses ("192.168.1.2","192.168.1.3")

#Enable Remote PowerShell
Enable-PSRemoting

#Rename computer and join domain
Add-Computer -Credential Admin-Username -DomainName dccb.net -NewName LegacyApp; Restart-Computer -force

After the server VM has restarted, I'm going to copy over the files from the old server to C:\LegacyApp on the new VM.

New-Item C:\LegacyApp -ItemType Directory
robocopy \\OLDSERVER\LegacyApp\ C:\LegacyApp /E /ZB /COPYALL /R:1 /log:C:\Robocopy.log

The script ran in 1 second. That is just too fast. Let's view the Robocopy log

Get-Content -Path C:\Robocopy.log

I'm seeing this

2019/10/31 10:04:02 ERROR 5 (0x00000005) Accessing Source Directory \\OLDSERVER\LegacyApp\
Access is denied.

I'm going to open another elevated PowerShell and log into OLDSERVER

Enter-PSSession OLDSERVER -Credential domain-admin

I'm getting an error message

Enter-PSSession : Connecting to remote server Loki failed with the following error message : WinRM cannot complete the
operation

This means PowerShell remoting is not enabled on OLDSERVER.
Well, let's RDP into it then. Then open an elevated PowerShell and type in

Enable-PSRemoting

Since I'm already on the server, let's check to see if the application folder is being shared and accessible across network. Since this is a Windows 2008 R2 box, I can't use the Get-SmbShare cmdlets. So I will use WMI

Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Share

Well, the share is there.
I'm going to take ownership and assign permission

takeown "D:\LegacyApp" /F /R /D y
icacls "D:\LegacyApp" /grant domain-admin:F /T

I'm seeing

Successfully processed 45242 files; Failed processing 0 files

Alt + Tab and went back to my other PowerShell and run robocopy again.

robocopy \\OLDSERVER\LegacyApp\ C:\LegacyApp /E /ZB /COPYALL /R:1 /log:C:\Robocopy.log

Now I have all the files on the new VM in C:\LegacyApps
Let's RDP into LegacyVM to run the app.

I opened up the main exe in Dependencies Walker, but it's only shows 4 DLLs.
Well, looks like I will have a lot of clicking to do.
Clicking ignore about 30 times got me in.
I wrote down the full path and name of all the OCX and DLL files, substitute system32 for SysWOW64

I saved that file as DLLs.txt and copied it to C:\Temp on OLDSERVER
RDP into OLDSERVER and run an elevated PowerShell console

Get-Content -Path C:\Temp\DLLs.txt | foreach {Copy-Item -Path $_ -Destination \\LegacyApp\c$\Windows\SysWOW64}

Open up C:\Temp\DLLs.txt and do a search for C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and replace that with regsvr32
Then I rename it as DLL.bat and copy it to \\LegacyApp\c$\Windows\SysWOW64\
Then RDP into LegacyApp and right click on that bat file and run as an administrator to register all the DLLs.
That's it. I now have a virtualized instance of the application.