My current Oracle apps is running in an old machine with Vista Operating system. I just bought a new desktop which has better hardware. I want to install windows7 and move the Oracle application to the new machine. What will be best solution for this? Can you give me some instruction ?
Thank you,
Kate

Sorry Hasan Mir is off line for few days and will be handling inquiries on 26-DEC-12. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

It is pretty straight forward to move virtual system from one machine to the other. Install the same virtual machine software on the new machine that you have on the old system. Version could be different. Copy virtual machine files from old system to the new one. Create a new virtual machine in the new system based on the copied files. You now have a clone up and running on the new machine.

My old machine has Vista -> VMWare -> Linux4 -> R12. My new machine has Windows 7. I haven't install anything yet. What would be the best solution?
My original idea is to install Oracle virtual box, the migrate Oracle DB and R12 apps server. According to your suggestion, I should still in stall VMWare, right? then How and which files to copy from the old to new machine? Is there any server name related setting I need to change after copying the files?

Thanks,
Kate

Migrating from VM Ware to VM Ware is easy. Simply copy the files over. There is no renaming required in the files as you are cloning a system into a new machine. Renaming of files is needed if you are cloning a system into the same machine.
When you bring the system up into the new machine, VM Ware will ask you if you are moving or copying. Simply select 'copying'.
I am not too sure if cloning a VMware machine into VirtualBox is possible and if the transition is smooth. I know there are some common file formats that are supported by all virtual software but I am not sure how smooth the ride is.

I decided to migrate from VMWare to VMWare as you suggested. I already created new virtual machine with the exact same version as the old one in my Win7 machine. Now my question is what files and how to copy from one virtual machine to another?
Thanks,
Kate

Each virtual machine is mapped to a folder on your harddisk. This folder is usually found under Virtual Machine folder. Locate that on your old box.
Copy this folder to the new machine. Place it in the similar location (location where VMWare is holding all virtual machine folders).
Delete the virtual machine you just created in the new machine.
You were suppose to recreate it based on the copied files. When you are create a new virtual machine system asks you whether you wish to create it from scratch or you wish to base it on existing files.
These are the high level steps.

I followed your instruction and copied the virtual folder to the corresponding folder in new machine. In the VMWare console, I chose 'Add Virtual Machine to Inventory' and selected the vmx file to add (Is this right?), but VMWare sees it as invalid virtual Machine. I got this message "The selected virtual machine is not recgnized on this system. The cause of this problem maybe that the virtual machine's .vmx file is corrupted. or that the virtual machine version is newer than is recognized by the host. You can remove the virtual machine from the inventory if you believe that it is not recoverable.' I am sure my VMWare version is the same. The only difference is the host operating system, my old machine has Vista and the new machine has Windows 7. So my questions are, should I use 'Add Virtual Machine to Inventory' for creating virual machine? Does the host operating system matter? What else should I try?

You did the right thing by choosing "Add". You choose "Create" if you are creating a new virtual machine from scratch. "Add" is used to add an existing machine, this is exactly what you want to do.
The reason for your error could be the incompatiblies between your old and new versions. You may find out more from VMWare website if your new version of VM Ware is compatible with the old one you have. The differences in the operating system is not really in the equation as such. If need be you can install older version of VMWare on your new system.