[OFB Cafe] Old Computers for Old Guys

[Fred Smith]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 8:52 AM, Derek Broughton <auspex at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> On July 14, 2008 23:34:42 Timothy Butler wrote:
>> > apparently there is no way to get vmware to
>> > boot an existing partition, which is maybe the stupidest thing in the
>
> Not true.  I've done it, though again not for years.  It's called, iirc, "raw
> disk" support.  It's very complicated, and again, like the Wine solution,
> doesn't guarantee that things work any better.

raw disk support is a bad idea, and I don't suggest anyone use it on a
dual boot system.  Here's why:

1) If you accidentally boot linux (while already running linux),
you'll corrupt your filesystems faster than you thought possible.

2) If you do get windows started, you'll have to re-activate it
because your hardware changed, and you'll probably end up having to
download a whole pile of drivers to get the VMWare "hardware" working.
That will tie that Windows installation to the VMWare instance, which
means if you ever boot it natively, it'll need to be re-activated
again, and will probably fail due to too many activations.

VMWare makes a converted product that will take a disk image of a
partition and build you a virtual machine out of it.  I'd suggest
using that instead.

-Fred