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=121239Unfortunately, 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