On 11/03/2009 01:24 AM, steve wrote:
Hi,
I recently installed windows 7 on my laptop, on a separate partition,
making it dual boot. Now, I would like to boot into this installation
without having to reboot. A casual google shows me that one can in fact
boot off an existing physical partition using any of the commonly
available virtualization tools on linux -- qemu, VirtualBox & VMPlayer.
So my question is, has anyone tried doing this and what were your
experiences if you did ?
I am not averse to the idea of simply reinstalling windows 7 in a
'proper' virtual environment, but just curious whether reusing the
existing installation is easily doable. I would be using the windows
installation just to test portability of code that i write. I don't
really need to boot into it often, neither do i expect it to be
lightning fast.
cheers,
- steve
I used to do this with a Win2K install and RH7 (or so). The trick was to
edit C:\boot.ini to offer 2 modes: normal and virtual. However, I can't
remember precisely the steps required. Search google.com/linux for "dual
boot +vmware" and trawl through the hits.
Obviously things will be different between Win2k & Win7 but this page
from 2006 appears to describe the same process:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=121239
Unfortunately, the server hosting the article that *that* article
references appears to be dead.
Anyway, this might set you in the correct direction. Just be sure to
consider this quote from the article:
-- snip --
VMware's own instructions insist that the procedure is "unsupported."
I.e., you can trash your disk if you make a mistake. So before you start
it is worth stopping to think about what you are doing.
-- snip --
Having said that, I'll mention that I used this procedure on at least 3
machines-two of them laptops--and never encountered any problems.
UPDATE: here's a newer article.
How To run your native WinXP in VMware in Fedora 7 (avoiding Dual Booting)
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=166890
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