[OT] setting up Bochs to run WinXP

[Ben Steeves]

On Sat, 2004-01-31 at 05:14, Hans Scheffers wrote:
> in the faq of bochs:
> 
> 7.  Why can't I use Bochs with my current Win95 installation? 
> 
> 
> Think about this. If you had two different PC's, they would require
> different hardware drivers. So you may not be able to safely move a disk
> drive with Win95 on it, from one to the other. Bochs is no different. It
> emulates a certain set of hardware devices, and requires each OS be
> configured for those devices. 
> 
> 
> Don't know if this is the reason, but this is for me a showstopper, as I
> sometimes have to use my windows :-/

It just means you can't use a pre-existing Windows installation.  This
should come as no surprise because Bochs or VMWare are operating on a
*virtual machine* running on your hardware -- in other words, the guest
OS (i.e., Windows) doesn't have access to the hardware directly (nor
should it, because then a buggy Windows app could bring down your whole
system rather than just Bochs/VMWare).

You have to re-install Windows into Bochs/VMWare, but once you have, it
works identically to an actual install... it even crashes and hangs for
no apparent reason from time to time, just like an actual Windows box.

Ben
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