Hello!
I currently have a pc with windows XP and Linux Ubuntu 7.10 in dual boot and I would like to use a virtualization program like VirtualBox to run the XP installation INSIDE my Ubuntu environiment...
Is this possible?

I'm asking because I've found a lot of tutorials about virtualizing XP, but none of them tells me if it's possible to do it using a pre-existing installation...

Thank you

You're not talking about hardware requirements (as in CPU, RAM and diskspace) or virtualisation software (VMware, XEN, QEMU, VirtualBox, whatever else) or the virtualisation image but running Windows. In my experience running Windows inside virtualisation SW isn't a single step task. Because the problems reside on the Windows side of things which may require you to make changes inside Windows, this thread shouldn't be in the Linux - Software forum but the /General forum IMHO.


QEmu takes a boot argument with which you can select an existing partition to boot but I couldn't get it to boot (PEBKAC most likely :-]). and while I usually don't plug non-OSS licensed software VMware does make things (relatively) easier. If you're interested maybe read up on LiveView, Java-based configuration tool and multi-booting stuff with VMware GSX. Even if it's not interesting if you're not going to use VMware it may be interesting because of the problems encountered with virtualisation "the VMware (or similar products) way".

VirtualBox I'm sceptical about. They don't show docs that give you the idea you can boot off an exisiting physical installation only How to migrate existing Windows installations to VirtualBox (notice the part about the driver "memory", registry and HAL) or HOWTO: manage VDIs and import native installations. One person claims to have done a VMware to VirtualBox migration but the details are vague.

So maybe you are able to use QEmu after doing research, maybe you can sacrifice speed for (relative) ease of use with VMware or else do a clean install with VirtualBox.


*BTW, if you're launching into technical details and stuff remember to not make posts like "it doesn't work" but post 0) HW/SW/HD details, 1) the steps you took and 2) (exact!) error output.

Thank you, I'll read each link you have posted with great interest, you proved me that it wasn't an impossible task to do


P.S.:
I'm sorry if I posted this topic in the wrong section, I tought that it was a Linux software related topic but maybe it was my mistake.