Virtualize an existing installation of Windows

[Richard Shaw]

On Dec 11, 2007 1:11 PM, Dylan Semler <dylan.semler at gmail.com> wrote:

> Using gparted, I've been able to sneak a Fedora partition on my work
> laptop and dual boot F8 and XP.  My next ambition is to be able to boot my
> XP partition as a virtual machine in Linux using Xen.  I've seen a how-to
> for vmware[1], but I feel that Xen performs better (especially with the VT-x
> extension) and I'd like to try that first.  Does anyone know if this is
> possible?
>
>
> [1]http://mazimi.wordpress.com/2007/06/24/virtualization-of-an-existing-physical-partition-of-windows-within-linux/
>
> --
> Dylan
>
> Type faster.  Use Dvorak:
> http://dvzine.org
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I don't know about using Xen. I wanted to go that route but my processor
does not support VT-x. I use VirtualBox and it works quite well. In their
tutorial they have instructions for building a VMDK file that points to the
partition. It may be more automated now but it was pretty manual when I did
it. A couple of notices:

- You need to be root to access the partition directly. I accomplish this by
opening a termal and sudo VirtualBox.
- Do not mount the partition in Linux and boot the virtual machine at the
same time, you can seriously mess up your system this way.
- Boot into XP first and create a new hardware profile just for use with
Xen/Virtualbox so it doesn't keep re-detecting hardware when you switch back
and forth.

Richard
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