I have a dual boot set with XP Pro and 11.2 Is there a way to boot the already installed XP Pro as a guest in VBox? There are many occasions when I would like to jump into XP from 11.2 with the VM. Searches can’t seem to find any link to this specifically but this may just be me and the terminology involved. Any links,references,suggestions,or cautions appreciated.
Found info on mounting an image here but not sure this is what I want.
I don’t believe this is possible from what you are describing. Here are the two major problems:
VirtualBox uses special image files (vdi) for its hard drives. I don’t know of any way to convert an existing file system into a vdi image. If there is, it would be a copy of your XP partition, so any changes there would make it inconsistent with your “native” installation.
The second problem is that Windows doesn’t handle some hardware changes very well. Since you are taking an installed copy of XP and putting it on new “hardware”, you have a good chance of seeing problems there.
I still think it would be pretty cool to find a utility to turn a physical disk/partition into a vdi file, but I was never able to find one myself. If anyone has found something like that, I would also love to know.
Oh no! Two copies of Win on my box … arrrrggg!
Seeing windows through a Linux lens is tough enough and I just didn’t want to go through installing it again in VBox for the limited but often necessary access I need when running 11.2.
[/QUOTE]I still think it would be pretty cool to find a utility to turn a physical disk/partition into a vdi file, but I was never able to find one myself. If anyone has found something like that, I would also love to know.[/QUOTE]
Have not found much on VMware on this either. I didn’t look at VMware relating to this possibility much as for some reason long ago I selected VBox as my app of choice. Don’t remember why now so I’ll look at it a little harder (but not too hard).
What I did was re format the Windows part mount it as /vm and reinstall Windows in the VM on that partition. But I don’t need high end 3D Windows games. I develop Windows programs on it. I’ve had it for 3+ years and 3 Suse versions.
You can use VM ware to do what you want but I remember looking at the instructions back when. The trick was to set up a second hardware configuration in Windows. But I forget how the switch was made between the two boot configurations.
But I like just having windows under control in a VM. I seldom shut it down just suspend it. Takes about 15 secs to start it up again that way.
Seems to be a plethora of alternatives. Though not exactly what I was originally thinking of but still might be a few workable alternatives in there. This may be a little closer to what your looking for however, MatthewEhle.
Hey, that’s great! I spent some time looking for a solution like that about a year ago. I’m a big fan of VBox, so this will likely come in handy in the future. It would be a killer feature for VBox to be able to boot and run from an existing physical partition… I hope you pick a solution that works for you until they decide to build it lol!
I’ve wondered about that myself. Like MySQL, it’s an alternative to one of Oracle’s proprietary products, and it wouldn’t be in their character to continue its development. Both are open source, though, and they surely aren’t going to die.
VirtualBox is not a big deal. It probably won’t stay free very long, but they are other virtualization solution noawdays, even better than VirtualBox. However VirtualBox is incredibly simple to use. I didn’t understand why Sun bought MySQL … until I heard that Oracle intended to buy Sun. Then it became very clear. And yep … we have to migrate to PostGreSQL. I don’t know what all the webhosters - basically the whole Internet - providing MySQL services to their customers are going to do, maybe they’ll end up paying royalties to Oracle. It’s a very big deal.
So here is my question on that… isn’t MySQL under the GPL? Oracle might own the brand and logo, but what’s to keep another company or the OSS community from forking the project if Oracle decides to do something unsavory?
As far as the other projects, I’m really interested to see at far of an arm’s length they are willing to run Sun. I’m choosing to be optimistic…