Can I transfer Windows from bare metal to a virtual machine?

[Nickolai]

I'm buying a used ThinkPad with a Windows license. I will be using a computer with Linux and run Windows in a virtual machine (I'd like to try QEMU/KVM with video pass-through, to try to achieve near 100% video performance) Can I transfer my licensed Windows from bare metal to a virtual machine?

[theterminator93]

The only thing I can think of to try would be to use imaging software (Ghost, FOG, etc) to create an image of the physical disk, then image the virtual machine from that created image.

[Nickolai]

Yes, there certainly should be some imaging software involved, though I must figure out which one will support the format needed for QEMU-KVM. Maybe I'll have to use QEMU's own qemu-img, but can it read physical disks? Maybe I'll have to use another imaging software first, and then convert an image with qemu-kvm.

Unless I'll reinstall OS from scratch: it's nice to have such an option. Should I be generally able to reinstall Windows from scratch and still use the license I'm given with the laptop?

[rumbero]

I'd suggest to create a standard VHD using disk2vhd and use this as a basis for further conversions or transfers. Did that once to convert an existing Windows Vista system to use it with qemu-kvm. Still works fine.

[theterminator93]

Unless I'll reinstall OS from scratch: it's nice to have such an option. Should I be generally able to reinstall Windows from scratch and still use the license I'm given with the laptop?

In general, no - the key is matched to the hardware detected by the OS. If more than a couple key hardware components change, the key won't activate the OS. However - if the license key on the sticker on the laptop hasn't been used to activate the software before (a generic key is used on laptops shipped from the factory), you can probably do it.