Hi,
Like many of you, I only use Windows occasionally. However, I still keep a partition for it, and I don't want to delete it. Can I make a virtual machine, like VMWare or VirtualBox, do a virtual machine with Windows as the guest OS, and make the hard disk the Windows partition? Or can we reverse it and make Windows (the real one, not the virtual one) use a virtual hard disk? Thanks!

I've got Kubuntu 6.10 Edgy and Windows XP SP2.

you can either get rid of linux and run it as a vm or get rid of ms and run it as a vm on linux.

The main advantage is you will never have to play with your partition table.

qemu
http://qemu-forum.ipi.fi/index.php

since you already know about vmware vbox I assume you know where to go for their links.

2) if however you mean can I transfer files between your host and the virtual drive (vm) the answer is still yes but I do not know the ms way....with qemu you would set up networking and use
ssh and scp for big file transfers.

I am biased against ms so do not recommend it to be connected to the net....so you can sandbox it....and use iso image files of big files to transer files from the host to the vm.....or small floppy image files from host to vm and vm to host.

the problem is I have been unable to reverse the cd iso image files from vm to host.....a project in my too hard basket but as stated you can use ssh and scp.