virtualizing a Windoze install

[Alan Dacey Sr.]

On Saturday 13 June 2009 10:27:55 pm Howard Coles Jr. wrote:
> Ladies and Gents, I have Windoze Vista installed, on one laptop, and
> Windoze XP, on another.  I vaguely remember reading something about running
> that physical install as a virtualized guest in Linux (eliminating the need
> to dual boot).  I remember reading an article about the license key
> activation and how to avoid having to activate it each time you switched
> from running in a virtual session and a physical session.
> The question is, how

I remember reading something about this a few weeks ago.  I forgot where I got 
it from but it may have been from Planet Ubuntu or Planet Kubuntu, the 
developer's blogs websites.  The method uses some fairly advanced techniques 
so if your linux-fu is not strong, you may want to do a new install in 
VirtualBox or VMware then reinstall all your programs and copy your data over.  
That will take way longer but is way easier.  
If I remember correctly, the basic steps are to make a new installation in 
Vbox (or whatever) then mount the vista partition as a second hard drive, use 
dd to copy it over to the primary drive then fix the display drivers and do 
something else.  I started skimming the article at that point.
I also read about some way to make an install disk from your current windows 
installation.  It may only work with XP but google it to find out yourself.  If 
it does work then you can make one and do a simple install in the 
virtualization software of your choice.
Just a word of caution, always back up anything that you do not want to loose 
before you start anything of this nature.

Alan
What?  Behind the rabbit?