[libvirt-users] Dual-boot and also use raw disk in virtual machine

[Justin Clift]

On 06/01/2010 01:09 PM, Richard Walker wrote:
<snip>
> Am I going to be able to get this to work?

Hi Richard,

Reading through the steps you took, my initial thought is that it sounds 
like a bad idea (sorry).

It sounds like you want to have Windows 7 on the 2nd hard drive, and be 
able to boot it from either inside a virtual machine, or natively as a 
dual boot.

To me, the major problem that presents is the different devices windows 
will see with each type of boot.

For example:

   Native boot
   ***********

   Real motherboard chip set (ie drivers for Intel, or AMD, or nVidia,
                              or something else)
   Real CPU (ie Intel or AMD)
   Real hard drives for storage (perhaps Intel, or nVidia drivers)
   Real network card(s) (ie drivers for Intel, or Broadcom, or Realtek,
                         etc)
   Real graphics cards (ie graphics drivers for nVidia, or ATI, or Intel,
                        etc)
   <and more>


   Virtualised (KVM) boot
   **********************

   Virtual motherboard chip set (software)
   Virtual CPU (partially a pass through of your real one)
   Virtual hard drive storage (KVM provided emulation layer)
   Virtual graphics cards (KVM provided emulation layer)
   <and more>

I'm not going to say it's 100% impossible, but it's definitely likely 
going to confuse the heck out of windows, when it tries to boot up using 
(for example) an nVidia or Intel chipset and they're not there.

Have you told windows not to automatically reboot at BSOD, so you can 
read what's causing the BSOD?  It may specifically list the cause (ie a 
specific driver?) on the BSOD screen, and you may be able to work around it.

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

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