Virtualbox - how to run an already installed WinXP on it?

Message

gentoobrother · Post by **gentoobrother** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:30 pm

I have a WinXP on my sda1 partition and I would like to simply play Thief once in a while (like 3 times a day

). Switching to Windows takes time so I found this virtualbox thingy. I have read through the manual (yeah yeah, section 9.6 too about raw disks) and still don't know how to make an image of my already existing installation of WinXP and run it on Gentoo. Anybody got a clue?

cheers

miro

blubbi · Post by **blubbi** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 12:53 am

be aware, IMHO there is NO VideoAcceleration in a Virtualized environment.

You need the tool "sysprep" to prepare WinXP to be migrated to other hardware.
There IS NO other way except a new install.

Goolge for sysprep, I will not give support for windows.

After syspreping your XP create an image (egg. with Acronis True Image or Northon Ghost or something similar)
and install that image to your VirtualEnvironment.

Remember: NO OpenGL

regards
blubbi

Gusar · Post by **Gusar** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 9:01 am

You don't need to make an image. That's the point of using raw disk access. Create the vmdk file as instructed in the manual, then create a new vm in VirtualBox and select the vmdk file as the hard disk for this vm. If you get a blue screen while windows boots inside VirtualBox, there's a fix explained in the VirtualBox wiki. But, as blubbi said, you will have no video acceleration, so you won't be able to play Thief this way. I did not use sysprep, it's not necessary.

blubbi · Post by **blubbi** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:45 am

Okay, but how do you get around the windows "Hardware dongle".
Windows needs to be reactivated if you change complete hardware. I made the experience that migrating XP to another hardware is only possible with sysprep. And migrating to virtualbox is IMHO the same like migrating to other hardware, so XP will complain. I am not that used to XP but I think I'll have to try this.

Thanks for the clarification.

blubbi

Gusar · Post by **Gusar** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 3:39 pm

blubbi wrote:Okay, but how do you get around the windows "Hardware dongle".

You don't. The first time you boot windows from within VirtualBox, you will have to reactivate. Then if you boot natively, you're asked for activation again, but I simply ignore it, windows still works. Then again you could get a corporate version of windows (those don't need to be activated).

Also, if you plan to switch between native and VirtualBox, you should create a second hardware profile.