Virtualization Questions for Linux Gurus...

[BrianG]

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.