[ale] If you must restore a windows computer, how do you make it better?

[Brian Whigham]

I have a dual head rig with VMWare Fusion, one head and virtual screen on
which I run XP full screen as a guest.  I think I could have it auto-boot
with a script.  I think I could do the same with VMWare server, without
requiring a script (I think it supports "boot vm at startup" out of the
box).  I don't mean to push the VMWare.  That's just how I do it.
VirtualBox would probably also be a great option.  I love VBox.  I just
don't remember how well it does full screen.

I tried to figure out how to move a physical partition to a virtual one
(P2V).  I couldn't.  I think it came down to the windows kernel that is
automatically chosen upon installation.  Physical had ACPI and virtual
hardware didn't or some such.  So, I just did a fresh XP install.

Trying to mask Linux entirely, without the potential of ever ending up in a
terminal, seems like a challenge.  It might be easier to manage expectations
and be ready to restart the VM, if need be.  I expect booting into the
full-screen Windows OS (as a guest) is possible, though.

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 3:52 PM, Preston Boyington
<preston.lists at gmail.com>wrote:

> Brandon Checketts wrote:
> <snipped>
> > Then, my though it to copy an entire existing WinXP partition to a VM
> > and somehow make that bootable.
>
> I was going to do this myself a while back.  In the docs for VirtualBox
> it speaks about how to do this.  There is a program you have to run in
> Windows first to 'unlock' the OS from the disk (or similar... it's been
> a while).
>
> the biggest drawback I had was the lack of 'horsepower'.  on the systems
> i played with they were very slow in a virtualized environment (speaking
> of laptops here) or lacked full hardware features.
>
> --
>
> Arrant Drivel - really, it's just trash...
> http://www.arrantdrivel.com/
>
> Where the road takes me - a highwayman's perspective
> http://www.prestonboyington.com/
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