V2P, P2V dilemma (reformatting pc)

Hey there.

Been a fan of Youtube channel for a while now, havent found an excuse to sign up and participate on the forum though, until now.

 

My OS has been running "slow" for a while now, being saturated with both usage and applications. It has gotten to the point where i would have to do either a major cleanup of the system or reinstall the OS and start fresh.

The problem is, since the last reformat, i´ve installed quite a few applications that i am regularly using. While i can reinstall all those apps, setting them up properly would take time. Not to mention i might forget some settings.

So i was thinking of maybe creating a virtual machine, installing the OS and all the software, configure it, then deploy the virtual machine on my phsyical machine as a "fresh install". This would allow me to continue using all the software normally untill i am ready for V2P. Another option would also be to create a virtual machine from my existing physical machine (P2V), reformat, then continue using software in virtual machine, untill i can set it up properly under a fresh install.

The dilemma is though, that i have not found a suitable solution for doing this. Since i do not plan on doing this regularly, maybe once every couple of years, the option to purchase an expensive software solution goes out the window. And i have not been able to find a simple low cost solution to solve my problems.

 

Any idea regarding this would be greatly appreciated.

Microsoft have a tool for this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx 

I can't remember what its limited to (in terms of what software it can be used by) and the image has a max size of 127GB (which could be an issue)

Single partition, 128GB OCZ SSD. Though not all of the space is used.

Been browsing through V2P and P2V software, but havent came across that MS tool. Giving it a go as we speak. Still about 12-13 hours till it finishes then we will see.

Thanks a bunch so far.