Virtualization Questions for Linux Gurus...
 

I am slowly trying to migrate more and more away from Windows to Ubuntu, but there are still several programs that are Windows-only that I want to run. I dabbled using Wine, but had limited success. And some things simply won't run.

I am currently dual-booting Windows 7 Pro-64bit and Ubuntu 11. This works, but is inconvenient in that I have to reboot when I want to do something Windows-specific. I've used VirtualBox on my wife's Mac to run WinXP Pro with great results, but this would require me to "reinstall" Windows (along with all patches and programs) as a virtual machine from within VirtualBox.

What I would LOVE to be able to do is use a virtual machine that would boot and run from the Windows files I already have on my drive - basically create a Windows VM and point the it to the files already on the Windows partition rather than a VM image. Does anyone know if this is possible? I tried Googling it, but I either am not using the proper terms (or asking the right question), or it can't be done.

OK, I found the following PDF for VMWare (which isn't free):
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/dualboot_tech_note.pdf

Now to go see if the same can be done using VirtualBox...

You could use VMware player as is it's available for Linux and convert physical disks into VM's using VMware's converter: http://bit.ly/tHxrsy

Not sure how Win7 will run on a Linux box but it might be worth trying?

We do this on a regular basis at work to get rid of old server HW. Well, we're not using VMware player but ESX :)