[Ubuntu-US-NM] Use VMWare to boot a physical Windows XP HD

[Eric Krieger]

I recently had need to boot up and old hard drive that had XP on it but 
I did not want to pull apart a PC and try to get the XP drive working.  
Enter VMWare....

Here's how I was able to boot the physical XP drive under Linux via 
VMWare. 

1. Used a USB 3.5 HD enclosure and connect the XP drive to it.

       If the drive was shutdown uncleanly you may need to manually 
mount it with the following command.

       sudo mount ntfs-3g /dev/whereyourdriveis /mount/somemountpoint -o 
force
   
       Once the drive is mounted under linux contiunue to step 2.

2. Launch VMWare.
3. Go to File -> New -> New Virtual Machine.
4. Select "Custom"
5. Select Next
6. Select your operating system (i.e. Win XP)
7. Select Next
8. Give it a name like "WindowsXP"
9. Select Next
10 Specify processor One or Two
11. Select Next
12. Choose public or private (on a single-user machine this doesn't matter)
13. Select Next
14. Select the memory to devote to the virtual machine. 512 MB is a 
pretty useful number.
15. Select your network connection
16. Select Next.  
17. Leave SCSI set to BusLogic
18. Select Next
19. Select Use Physical Disk
20. Select Next
21. Select Use Entire Drive
22. Select Next
23. Specify the place to save the VM
24. At this point you're done Select Power On to boot the Physical drive 
in VMWare!

I have an ogg video of how to do this if anyone wants it...

=)