VMWare?

antispam246

Query for anyone who has experience with this program. Can it run an OS that is already installed? Say for example, I was running XP and Vista in a generic dual boot, could I then, rather than booting to each OS individually when needed, install VMWare on XP and be able to access my Vista installtion through it? Or would I have to reinstall Vista and everything I have on Vista (software) once I'd installed VmWare on XP?

Bob63

The latter...

VMware and VirtualBox, both of which do pretty much the same thing, work with virtual machines that run within a host operating system. The virtual machine also uses a virtual disk, which in most cases is a single multi-gigabyte sized file on the host operating system's disk. I ran VMware server on Windows for a year before going over to a Mac. I ran Ubuntu Linux and Solaris as guest operating systems. Now on the Mac I run Parallels, a similar product to the previous two, and have XP, Solaris and Ubuntu guests. What I really like about the solution is that you can backup the whole virtual machine just by copying over the few files that contain the guest OS disk, its configuration settings and virtual memory. You can also easily take a snapshot of a machine that you can roll back to if you, for example, install dodgy software or get a virus. In fact you can setup a virtual machine that you use for a single purpose such as application testing, or web surfing - thus ensuring that your main OS is never exposed to the risk of virus infection. My Parallels installation allows a Windows guest OS to access the local disk - something you can disable if you wish for security reasons - but it is quite neat when XP can access files on the Mac.

If you frequently switch between different operating systems, or even if you run one main OS but only need occasional access to another one then these virtual machines are a great solution. From a money saving perspective they can also be free. VMware server on Windows used to be free (don't know if it is since I no longer own an XP machine). VirtualBox is free on all platforms. VMware and Parallels on Mac are both commercial software but cost less than US$100. Obviously if you run a commercial operating system as a guest OS then you must have a licence - so I have a fully licensed copy of XP, but my Ubuntu and Solaris are both free operating systems.

d900

you want the vmware converter that will suck up ur install into a Virtual machine you can open in vmware.

Paul_Herring

cheesy.mike wrote: »

antispam wrote:

Say for example, I was running XP and Vista in a generic dual boot, could I then, rather than booting to each OS individually when needed, install VMWare on XP and be able to access my Vista installtion through it? Or would I have to reinstall Vista and everything I have on Vista (software) once I'd installed VmWare on XP?

The latter...
[...]
The virtual machine also uses a virtual disk[...]

Really? What's the

Use a physical disk (for advanced users) - Choose this option to give the virtual machine direct access to a local hard disk

option for then? (On the setup page that allows you to create/use an existing virtual disk.)