I have a dual boot machine, openSUSE 11.0 and Windows XP. I am thinking of installing a vm server on the openSUSE side. My question is this, is it possible to use the existing windows xp install as the guest system or do I have to use another copy of Win XP. If I need to use another copy of Win XP, do I need to reinstall all of my Windows applications?
TIA
There are tools to take an existing OS and convert it into a virtual machine.
VMware Converter for workstation to virtual pc and virtual machine migration - VMware
Convert your Windows XP to a virtual machine, move the files over to your Linux partition. You can then even delete your Windows partition and resize your Linux partitions.
vchapman wrote:
>
> I have a dual boot machine, openSUSE 11.0 and Windows XP. I am thinking
> of installing a vm server on the openSUSE side. My question is this, is
> it possible to use the existing windows xp install as the guest system
> or do I have to use another copy of Win XP. If I need to use another
> copy of Win XP, do I need to reinstall all of my Windows applications?
>
> TIA
>
>
vmware has an .exe that will convert an existing install into a vm machine and there a few sitets that might be able to tell you how to use an existing as is - there’ll probably be the need to re-register
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Suse 11.0 x64, Kde 4.1beta (factory repo), Opera 9.x weekly
Technically its possible to create an empty GuestOS and point to your existing XP using the “raw disk” option… But it’s highly dangerous because doing so opens the possibility of multiple OS accessing the same file without the usual file locks… Which would likely result in file corruption and blue screen crashes.
In other words… Don’t do this unless you have some extraordinary reason for doing something that risky and really know what OS is accessing what files and disks.
Besides the P to V tools described, another very simple approach is to simply create a backup of your existing XP, then restore the backup to your VM. XP ordinarily shouldn’t have any problems “discovering the new hardware” (VMware virtual instead of your physical devices).