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.
I have booted XP as a virtual machine, using the *whole disk* under kvm. You
must have a boot manager installed, and must *not* try to boot Linux under
Linux, as you are likely to totally hose all your files. But running XP I was
able to boot up and do a little browsing as a proof of concept. It requires kvm,
if your hardware supports it modprobe to load the correct amd or intel kvm, then:
1 - qemu-img -c -b /dev/sda -f qcow2 MyVirtDisk.img
2 - qemu-kvm -m 512 -hda MyVirtDisk.img -net nic -soundhw es1370
At that point you will have a VM and should (may) be able to boot Windows from
the boot manager. Note that any changes will go in the image file, not to the disk.
I had no luck running as a partition, Windows expects a disk.
Note: this is probably dangerous in some way, I actually did "-hda /dev/sda"
which meant any stupid thing I did would be permanent. With the copy I din't
believe you can hurt yourself, but that's just my guess.
--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@xxxxxxx>
"We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot
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