Arch Linux

fiod

Member

Registered: 2007-04-02

Posts: 205

Quick vmware question

Hey

A quick vmware question:

Can VMWARE be used to run a Windows system that is already installed on my computer (I dual-boot with GRUB)
or do I have to re install Windows?

If not, do you know of another program that can do that?

Tnx
Fiod

mrbug

Member

Registered: 2007-07-17

Posts: 221

Re: Quick vmware question

I know that the higher-end version of VMWARE has a program that converts physical disks to virtual disks.

Also, I'm reasonably sure that with VirtualBox (and possibly QEMU and Xen) you can do a

dd if=/dev/sda of=/path/to/file/WindowsXP.img

to make a disk image of the physical drive and VB will be able to use it.

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dvdtube - download all uploads from a YouTube user and then optionally create a DVD.
(Regular version AUR link / SVN version AUR link)

Lone_Wolf

Member

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 11,911

Re: Quick vmware question

Yes, it can be done.

You can have vmware workstation use a physical drive for the vm instead of a virtual drive.
You will probably get a stop error from windows on booting.

There are ways to solve this by "cloning" the disk to a virtual disk with the P2V program (mentioned by mrbug in the previous post) that comes with vmware workstation 6 .

However, if you use another vmware product OR want to have the option to boot windows directly AND run it as a virtual machine, you need to change some things in windows for it to work.

Tell us which vmware product/version you are using and if you want to be able to boot windows directly, then we can help you further.

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

mrbug

Member

Registered: 2007-07-17

Posts: 221

Re: Quick vmware question

To follow up on Lone_Wolf's post, there is a trick to getting Windows to "like" different hardware (physical or virtual). Before cloning (or transferring) the system, you must remove ALL motherboard chipset-specific drivers. Windows XP is tied to the IDE drivers for some reason, so if you move the boot to a different motherboard (or even IDE expansion card), it will die with a BSOD stop error.

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dvdtube - download all uploads from a YouTube user and then optionally create a DVD.
(Regular version AUR link / SVN version AUR link)

raku

Member

Registered: 2006-08-23

Posts: 48

Re: Quick vmware question

it is possible to use Windows on physical disk and in VM machine. Search forum for my posts - I've written simple how-to-do-it.
I usually run Windows XP from VMware Server but when I need to get pure Windows, I just boot it from grub. And I am talking about THE SAME Windows system, installed on my /dev/hdc1 partition.

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raku