Re: [PLUG] Running installed WinXP in a vm

["K.S. Bhaskar" <ksbhaskar@gmail.com>]

I run Windows XP in a kvm virtual machine, and previously ran it with
qemu/kqemu on my old laptop that didn't have the vmx flag.  I created
it by booting a machine with Windows XP on its hard drive using
Knoppix.  On the machine where I wanted to run it virtually, I created
a virtual disk of the same size with qemu-img and booted that with
qemu and an ISO image of Knoppix.  I then used dd and nc to copy an
image of the Windows XP physical disk to the virtual disk.  It was a
l-o-n-g time ago, and I don't remember all the details any more, but a
couple of points:

1. I don't remember whether the Windows XP machine had XP installed in
a partition which I cloned, or whether I cloned the entire drive.  I
think I just cloned the partition, and I don't remember what I did
about the boot sectors.

2. I think I had to boot the virtual machine in safe mode (I had to
hit something like F8 at just the right time, if I remember correctly,
and choose safe mode).  In safe mode, it just kept spewing some
messages on my screen for a long time (I think I went to lunch and
when I came back it was booted in safe mode).  Then when I rebooted in
normal mode, it came up OK.

3. I had to have our Windows support team come and (re)join the
virtual machine to the domain and give it a new identity.

I run the virtual machine with -std-vga - I think I had to specify
this, otherwise, it wouldn't boot even in safe mode.

Anyway, this worked for me then.  At some point last year, I used a
similar technique to virtualize a Windows NT PC under VMware Server.
That also worked.

-- Bhaskar

On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Steven Phillips
<stevenclphillips@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I would think that WinXp would deactivate itself do to the massive change
>> in hardware from the real hardware to the virtual iron. In my (admittedly
>> limited) experience with VM's, I don't recall seeing any way of booting a vm
>> copy of an installed os. I have seen it boot from an iso, so maybe if you
>> create an iso from your hard drive, you might be able to use that. With a
>> dedicated folder on the root of the drive, you would be able to save
>> documents from the virtual machine for the installed version. It would be
>> easier to use a flash drive for that, imo.
>
>       Steve Phillips
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 12:58:08 -0800 (PST)
>> From: edmond rodriguez <erodrig_97@yahoo.com>
>> Subject: [PLUG] Running an existing native installed XP on a virtual
>>        machine?
>> To: Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List
>>        <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
>> Message-ID: <307729.41777.qm@web84104.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>>
>> While we are on the topic of virtual machines, I am curious if anyone has
>> had success running XP on a virtual machine on Linux using an existing XP
>> installed partition (native install).
>>
>> My machine came with XP installed, and I could only back it up, but not
>> make an install disk (that I know of).   And it would be nice to be able to
>> still boot XP natively and have it reflect any work I did while running on a
>> virtual machine.
>>
>> I already know there must be many issues, like hardware recognition, video
>> settings, etc, and the risk of things getting corrupted.  I also know some
>> or all of the recognition is dynamic, so maybe it would fix all the issues
>> during boot time.
>>
>> Edmond Rodriguez
>>
>>
>
>
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