Booting Windows partition within Slackware
 

My computer is a dual-boot system (Windows XP and Slackware 12.2).

Is there a way to boot Windows from my installed partition within Slackware?

I had a brief look at QEMU this morning and it looks like I need to create a boot image and then actually install windows into that boot image. I imagine other "virtual machine" solutions are similar, but I don't know enough about this yet. I would like to use my already installed OS rather than re-installing it.

I hope my question makes sense.

Unfortunately, when you boot one OS the other is unavailable (apart from transferring files, of course). What are you trying to do? If you still have your Windows CDs you can use them without creating an iso image within a virtual environment - you basically install them from scratch to the environment.

As XavierP says this is not possible. It's just like trying to install Windows to a new machine using a copy installed on another machine. This will never work. There are of course licensing issues involved as well. Windows, at the best of times, doesn't like being moved from it's original hardware to something new and a hard disk installed with Windows often won't work in another machine. On the other hand, it's usually quite trivial to do the same with Linux. This is one reason why the tendency for PC builders to not issue installation media is a real pain.

RATS!

To answer XavierP's question, "What are you trying to do?" I occasionally need native access to certain MSOffice tools.

For the most part, I get along fine with Word/Excel/Powerpoint documents in OpenOffice or MSOffice via Crossover Office. Unfortunately, occasionally the rendering of word documents is imperfect, which is not important most of the time, but when it is, it means a reboot to windows. I also on occasion need to get into MSAccess files (and my version of crossover does not support my version of access). I have tried mdbtools in the past, but the results have been hit and miss. I once tried unixODBC but couldn't figure out how to set up the access data connections.

So, I was looking for a simple way to use the stuff already in my windows install.

Thanks for your replies, although they weren't the answers I was hoping for. :)

Actually, it is possible to boot the Windows partition without reinstalling from within VMWare. I used to have that running; don't know where the tutorial is anymore - sorry. I'll see if I can track it down.

If you really want to do it, there is a way.

googling "vmware whole partition" brings up a few tutorials, though not the one I remember. Hope that helps, or that I didn't misunderstand what you wanted to do.

Why not install VirtualBox and install windows into it?
Don't use the OSE version as it doesn't support USB. Download VirtualBox directly from Sun's web site.
That works and will accomplish what you want to do. I have XP running in VirtualBox and it runs very well. You can even run it full screen, if you like.

Thanks. You understood perfectly what I wanted to do. There is at least one detailed tutorial there.

The boot image can be a real disk device file.

You could attempt to boot real harddrive with virtual machine while other system is running but:
1) This is dangerous.
2) Windows most likely will bluescreen because emulated hardware won't match the one you used before.

There are tutorials for converting a real parition into a VirtualBox disk image, e.g.:

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=1404
http://blarts.wordpress.com/2007/12/...u-feisty-fawn/
http://dotneverland.blogspot.com/200...indows-xp.html

Seems what you are asking is to provide real-time raw access to the Windows partitions from within Slackware. You can do this.

I have not used qemu in a long time but I was successful at accessing the Windows partitions in such a manner. VirtualBox also supports raw access but only with the binary version and not the open version.

Do know that even with raw access you must create a virtual machine to run Windows. Raw access substitutes the virtual partition with the actual physical partition but still must run within a virtual machine environment.

Once upon a time I ran WINE with direct access to my Windows partitions. I mounted the Windows partitions in Slackware. There were many WINE configuration file modifications to point to the Windows partition rather than the fake Windows drive in WINE. That was a few years ago and I don't know whether that trick remains possible with newer versions of WINE.

I now use VirtualBox to run Windows. I no longer dual boot, which became a pain and anti-productive. Last year I copied my Windows hard drive into a virtual machine. Then I fiddled with the new VirtualBox virtual drive to run smoothly. That is, I had to remove the video, sound, and network drivers, then install the VirtualBox add-ons to provide the same structure. I then moved all my data files to an ext3 partition so the files were available directly in Slackware. I then configured samba to access all of my data files from my Windows virtual machines.

I still have my Windows physical machines. Again using samba, I remapped the data partitions to my primary machine.

There is flexibility in any of these decisions, but requires significant sweat equity and study. Not trying to discourage you, just being forthright. If you have a second box, then you experiment with less concern for data loss. That is how I started. The second box provided me the liberty to make mistakes and learn.

Yep, I agree. So is dual booting or installing any OS.
Didn't have that problem, you have to set up a different hardware profile in Windows and have to adjust the drivers, but it is definitely do-able.

Woodman's advice is good.

Thanks for the advice and links. Although it appears I could do what (I think) I want, it might be wiser to want something else.

It seems it is probably way safer to just install XP from my media into a virtual partition. I'm probably begging for trouble trying to fly before I can walk.

Not funny. And no, this is not the same thing as dual-boot or installing any os.
I just really don't like idea about two operating systems accessing same physical disk at once and thinking that they both have exclusive access to the disk. This is a good way to make mistake and screw up data on "shared" partition. Example: mount partition via ntfs-3g and make OS within virtual machine access it at same time. What do you think will happen? Copying data from hdd into virtual drive is another story.

After replacing motherboard with another model, WinXP bluescreens on startup unless some precautions were taken before replacing motherboard.
It is a well-known problem. Just google for "motherboard upgrade bsod".

I strongly suggest that the original portster look into grabbing an additional hard drive and installing slackware to the second hard drive, for both security and sanity concerns!!