virtualizing a Windoze install

[David Fletcher]

On Sunday 14 Jun 2009, Howard Coles Jr. wrote:
> Ladies and Gents, I have Windoze Vista installed, on one laptop, and Windoze 
> XP, on another.  I vaguely remember reading something about running that 
> physical install as a virtualized guest in Linux (eliminating the need to 
dual 
> boot).  I remember reading an article about the license key activation and 
how 
> to avoid having to activate it each time you switched from running in a 
> virtual session and a physical session.
> The question is, how?
> 

I've never used Vista in any form :-) but I do have an XP virtual machine that 
I occasionally use when I work from home. I'm running it right now, just to 
let it do its updates. Apparently there was a mega patch Tuesday this week, 
but it just demanded a restart because AVG updated too hee hee.

So long as you have plenty of memory and a suitable processor in the laptop, 
you might be better off just wiping everything and installing Kubuntu by 
itself. I'm sticking with Hardy for a while so I can't vouch for anything 
later. Get VirtualBox direct from the web site:-
http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.2.4/virtualbox-2.2_2.2.4-47978_Ubuntu_hardy_i386.deb
not the Ubuntu repositories - it has more facilities - and reinstall XP under 
that. Make sure you install the VirtualBox Guest Additions so you can set the 
screen resolution etc. It's under the Devices menu on the VirtualBox window.

I installed XP from an image of the CD. I've not tried wiping XP from a 
machine then reinstalling it under VirtualBox on the same machine, but so 
long as you use the same license key I think you should be OK. AFAIK XP can 
see a serial number of the processor chip on the physical machine even though 
it's running as a virtual machine. This number might be confirmed back at 
base in Redmond as it fires up the Winoze Genuine Disadvantage stuff. I don't 
know for sure. Apparently this is the reason I can't move an XP virtual 
machine from one physical machine to another - the machine starts up but XP 
refuses to run because it knows it's moved house. Grrrrr. If you need to 
install using the same license key on a different physical machine you might 
have to phone them to get a re-activation code. The story in this 
circumstance is that there was a motherboard failure which had to be replaced 
along with other stuff like the hard drive, hence the fresh install on an 
apparently new PC :-)

What I do know you can do, because I did it a couple of weeks ago, is back up 
your virtual machine file to another physical machine, upgrade your Kubuntu 
installation (which I did afresh on a new hard drive), restore your VM backup 
to the new installation, and fire up your XP virtual machine again. It's 
happy because it sees the same processor chip.

Dave