Re: XP ISO for virtual machine to enable XP boot on current partition.

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

On 12/14/2009 4:30 AM, Steve Wright wrote:
Hi all,

I hope you can help with me an what appears to be an odd ball question.

I'm trying to setup a machine with XP running inside a VM - (virtualbox at
present). However, all evidence states at present that I need to reinstall XP
inside the VM software which seems archaic. The other alternative I have
found is the use of an ISO to boot XP on my current XP installation on my
primary drive.

Question - how do I create an ISO on my current XP installation so that the
VM can link in and boot XP from within a VM while still retaining the dual
boot nature of the machine e.g. XP will still need to be fully bootable from
the primary partition if I need it.......? As far as I am aware, I just need
an ISO to kick off the current XP boot procedure.

As far as I can see, this stuff is an elementary requirement?

I hope you can help.

Regards

Steve Wright, UK


Hello Steve,

to begin with, you must realize that a VM is actually that a machine. It has its own BIOS, and hardware. Granted that they are all virtual (simulated), it is an actual machine.

You have to install Windows into the VM, because the hardware specifications of your physical machine and virtual machine are different. Further, if your version of Windows is an OEM version of Windows that is tied to the BIOS of the physical machine, it will not even install. If you create a blank VirtualDisk and copied the physical hard disk to the virtual hard disk, you would still run into a problem because the virtual BIOS is different and when you did the repair install, it would abort.

I ran into this problem a few years ago, and bought a retail (full install) version of XP Pro so that I didn't have to deal with all of those annoying issues.

Now then, on the plus side . . . why even bother. I use both Linux-Ubuntu and Windows. I can by having a VM set-up with WindowsXP use a real XP environment whether I am on a Linux box or a Windows box. VirtualBox has versions for both OSes and will use the identical VirtualDrive. The only change I have to make is the shared folder names depending on the box I am running on.

The other advantage for someone like myself is that as a programmer, I like to make sure that the apps I write can run under different versions of Windows. I have VirtualDisk for Win3, Win386, Win3.11, Win95, Win98, Win98se, WinNT, Win2000pro, WinXP, WinVista and Win7.

Granted they VM runs slow, they are serviceable for testing the stability of the code that I write which is my major goal.

It's also nice to have when you have an application that only runs on a particular version of Windows.

Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services

Web site: http://csdcs.site90.net/
E-mail: c.joseph@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

.

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