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I have a dual boot setup, Windows XP and Windows 7. I have software installed in XP which only runs on XP. What I want to do now is to convert the physical XP machine into a virtual machine using VMware Converter.

But the problem is that I need to select both an active, and a system partition in order for the virtual machine to be bootable.

I don't have a partition that is both system and active. My active partition is the partition where I save my files. And the system partition is the Windows XP. I only want to select 1 because I don't have much disk space to store the virtual machine.

Please help, I need a little enlightenment.

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I suspect some confusion over the word "active". Why do you think that that partition is your active partition? What did you do to find out what your active partition was? What does diskpart tell you about your partitions? – JdeBP Jun 5 '11 at 14:07
vmware converter has labeled the different partitions as active, system, unknown, and logical. – Ieyasu Sawada Jun 5 '11 at 23:12
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Can you make a VM out of the whole computer without affecting the physical installation, and then use partitioning software to delete the Windows 7 from the VM, and set the XP partition as active? I know you said you don't have much space, but do it to an external drive temporarily.

The other alternative is to use diskpart and set the XP as active temporarily, and make your VM, then set it back to the Windows 7 partition.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

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