Hello All.

I'm new on this forum, so please be mercyfull
I'm just wondering if it will be possible to fast switch between operating systems in following way:
Assume, that we're using laptop with 2 operating systems. On first partition we have WinXP, next partition is Linux (as swap) and additionally we have third partition with filesystem which can be easily accesed from both WinXP and Linux.
Now, assume that we're currently using linux. We're suspending system to file. This file is located on our third partition. We restarting machine. Now, we need some app operating from MBR. This app is checking our third partition and if we have more than one suspend file it asks us which of those files we want to load. When we choose, it loads desired OS.
This approach is more complicated than use of some virtual PC software but it has one big advantage - it doesn't share a phisical memory between two simultaneously running systems.
This short description is a big simplification. I'm aware that it may be difficult to implement/configure. But I'm hardly know if it can be done at all.
Thanks in advance for any replies.

Kind Regards,
holrin.

suspending a system to a file is a feature of the running os.
the os would write the file and the os has to read the file (though at an earlier stage as for example the login promp)
that means that the system has to start to a certain point at which it checks for the file and is able to load it.
it is not a boot loader that loads a syspend-to-disk file it is the actual system

it might be possible to suspend (eg) windows to disk (file)
on next boot, boot into linux, suspend to disk (file) on next boot, boot into windows and windows being able to detect a previously saved suspend-to-disk image which it then loads... but the final result would be you having a windows system which has not been restarted for serveral days, and that is never a good thing for a normal desktop windows system :-)

Yes, I know that loading suspended system is OS dependent. What I'm thinking about is to do some low level coding and create kind of modified bootloader which can detect dumps from suspended systems and let us decide which system we want to launch.
I believe, that kind of launch should be faster than normal startup procedure. Furthermore, it should be easy to create simple desktop app and use it for fast suspend-and-reboot action.
But, as I mentioned before it's only theoretical consideration
Thanks for reply.

Kind Regards,
holrin.