VM setup from dual boot

[NoOp]

On 05/12/2011 10:46 PM, Sandy Harris wrote:
> I've got a machine that happily dual boots. Grub & most of Linux
> on sda, a solid state disk. Swap, XP and a few other things on
> sdb, a hard drive.
> 
> I sometimes need XP, because my work involves editing Word
> files and OO does not handle all of them right. In particular, it
> has trouble with docx files and complex multi-column formats.
> 
> Is there an easy way to get from where I am -- dual boot with
> a full XP install on sdb1 -- to a usable VM system? All the
> instructions I find assume you build the VM first, then put
> an OS on it.
> 
> Ubuntu 10.10 on a fairly powerful machine. 3 GHz dual
> core, hyperthreaded so Linux things there are four, 8 gigs
> RAM, 19xx by 10xx graphics. My XP apps do not need
> much of that, maybe 512 megs, one core, 1024*768.
> 

VMware Converter works great (for me) & I run with VMWare Player. Keep
in mind that you may have to re-authorize (or whatever it's called) once
installed in the VM. On one I only had to click the buttons, on the
other I had to call the 1-800 number, but no issues with either.

Hint: VMWare Converter uses 'Hot Cloning', meaning it does it from the
running XP. So you'll need another machine to clone the XP to. You can
then move it back into the VMWare Player on the original dual-boot
afterwards. This actually is a good thing, as you can keep a backup copy
of the image on the other machine. The cloning process won't affect your
original dual boot XP. Be sure to read the converter doc before starting.