WinXP on anotther partition running as guest OS: is it possible (for free)?

[Andre Costa]

Hi Mike (and others),

On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 6:49 PM, Mike Wright <mike.wright at mailinator.com> wrote:
>
> Andre Costa wrote:
>  > Hi,
>  >
>  > I have here Fedora 8 and WinXP on the same machine. I use XP mostly
>  > for gaming, but every once in a while I have to edit some Word docs
>  > sent by clients on MS Word. ... As much as I wish, OpenOffice isn't
>  > just there yet, sometimes it messes with the docs, I already tried
>  > this and received complaints about format changes. It sucks, and
>  > eventually there will be 100% compatibility, but there's still some
>  > ground to cover.
>  >
>  > According to VMWare Workstation FAQ I could run my installed XP as a
>  > guest system, but I was wondering if there was no free alternative,
>  > since it costs USD 189,00 and I will only need it every once in a
>  > while.
>  >
>  > Anyone solved a similar problem? Any advice on what to use and what to
>  > avoid? Any pitfalls?
>
>  I've had good success with VirtualBox from http://www.virtualbox.org .
>
>  Especially neat is the "seamless mode" where the Windows toolbar appears
>  at the bottom of your Fedora display.  When you run a Windows program it
>  shows up in a Fedora window.
>
>  Audio also works well.
>
>  Pitfalls:
>
>    During installation it will create a group called vboxusers.  You
>  must add yourself to that group, then logout and log back in; otherwise,
>  it won't run.  After that you won't need to go through that step.
>
>    Find /dev/net/tun and chgrp it to vboxusers; otherwise, host mode
>  networking won't work.
>
>  Other than that you should have no problems.

Nice, thks for the tip on VirtualBox, it does look like an
alternative. However, the more I read about what I'm trying to do, the
more I feel like stepping back...

For example: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows

This seems a little better, despite being Ubuntu-driven:
http://mesbalivernes.blogspot.com/2008/01/virtual-box-booting-from-existing.html

However, I guess no matter where I look (VirtualBox, VMWare etc.),
chances are I might end up screwing my windoze partition during the
process (mostly because it insists on not running on a different
hardware from the one it's been installed to). I'm not sure it's worth
the risk...

Anyone here is actually using this (real WinXP partition as guest
system on Fedora using VirtualBox)? If so, any tips?

Regards,

Andre