VMWare Server - Use Physical WinXP?

[Rapael Morcha]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 07:12:05PM -0400, Dave Woyciesjes wrote:
> Michael James wrote:
> > On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:10:20 am Dave Woyciesjes wrote:
> >> 	My laptop has WinXP installed on sda1, and Ubuntu on sda2. Has anyone
> >> with a similar setup used the Wizard in VMWare Server to use the WinXP
> >> install as a guest to Ubuntu? To be precise, if I try this, I'm
> >> wondering if the WinXP install will get hosed....
> > 
> > Boot into the native windows install and go to the hardware wizard.
> > Create a  "vmware"  profile as well as the default one.
> > You could all the existing profile  "native"  or  "hardware".
> > 
> > Don't bother to change anything in either profile at this stage.
> > 
> > Re-boot into Ubunto and fire up VMware.
> > Give the virtual machine access to the raw Windows partition.
> > Boot Windows within VMware and choose the  "VMware"  profile.
> > Windows will say something to the effect of,
> >  "Wow things have changed, do you want me to adjust?"
> > Saying yes will only change the  "VMware"  hardware profile,
> >  leaving the  "Native"  one for real boots.  (if you ever do that again...)
> 
> 	Hmmm, got Grub error 17... When I created the VM, I chose to use just 
> the WinXP partition. I wonder if I should haven chosen the whole disk? 
> Probably have to edit Grub so I have plenty of time to choose WinXP. 
> Ubuntu is the default...
	
It's pretty straight forward.
Perhaps you may want to look at [1].

[1]
http://mazimi.wordpress.com/2007/06/24/virtualization-of-an-existing-physical-partition-of-windows-within-linux/