Re: Qemu and existing windows partition
Alternately, there's an Open Source version of Virtualbox, a virtualisation
machine which runs much smoother than QEmu, http://www.virtualbox.org
It does tend to eat serious amounts of memory, but for a box with 512 MBs
(256 MBs allocated to the virtual machine, plus handling and VRAM) it
shouldn't be much of a trouble.
The downside is it doesn't have a way of mounting of disk images (or
partitions) directly, so the partition would have to be set up within a
virtual machine in advance, then data copied to it off an ISO image or
transferred by network (or somesuch). A Linux LiveCD image might help in
setting up the partition, something like System Rescue CD -
http://www.sysresccd.org/ - should come in nicely.
The safest method is as follows:
1. Back everything up to ISO images.
2. Create the partition within a virtual drive image (FAT32 might be better
- different versions of NT do not require specific security permissions on
files to boot, so an entire NT install can be copied from an NTFS partition
to the FAT32 one), the System Rescue CD image comes with Ranish Partition
Manager bootable straight from the initial Linux boot prompt.
3. At this point all of the files should be present on the new Windows
"drive", but not the MBR code, and the partition might still not be
bootable, so with Ranish Partition Manager booting off the Live CD, or with
some other utility, copy/save the MBR of the Windows partition. Then
restore the MBR inside the virtual machine.
Or, even simpler: let the Virtualbox machine boot off the "restore" CD, let
it get to the point where it writes the bootloader and the MBR boot code,
quit the install, then copy all of the Windows partition's contents to the
virtual drive's partition.
Later on, Virtualbox' networking could be used for file sharing between the
host and the guest system.
On 09.07.2007 at 21:51 Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
>On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 11:51:31PM -0400, Carl Fink wrote:
>> I apologize if this has already been discussed to death. I did do
>multiple
>> searches on phrases like "existing partition" but didn't find what I'm
>> hoping exists.
>>
>> The box I'm typing on, like most cheap PCs, came with Windows Home
>> preinstalled, but no installation disks, just "restore" disks to
>reproduce
>> the exact original disk image. When I installed Debian, I shrank the
>> original Windows partition and never booted it again.
>>
>> I need to use Windows software occasionally for work, so I'd like to set
>up
>> qemu, but all instructions I can find for it require the installation
CD,
>> which I don't have. Is there any reason I can't just define /dev/hda
>(real)
>> as hda (for qemu)? If not, it's only 15 gig--what if I just dd a copy
of
>> it?
>
>i've played around with this a bit, but had no real success. The
>problem is that usually windows will not boot on the "new hardware"
>of qemu. There are a couple of work-arounds. One I've tried, and
>failed with, is to make a full system backup using windows tools,
>including the registry state. You then do a basic installation (this
>of course requires a cd) to your qemu image and then restore the
>system from the backup which you've placed somewhere where qemu can
>get at it. As I said, this failed for me, after multiple tries. The
>other option is to prepare windows for new hardware. There are a
>couple ways to do this using various versions of windows. The process
>is that essentially, you have to get windows into a state where it
>will boot from and recognise new hardware, as if you were changing the
>motherboard. THere are many google hits on this. The one I find
>intriguing, but haven't tried, is to do the following within windows:
>
>remove any specialised disk drivers and replace them with the windows
>default drivers for ide disks.
>
>remove any specialised pci bridge drivers and replace them with the
>window default drivers.
>
>remove the vga driver.
>
>reboot in the new system and it should come up and you can then
>install proper drivers. I guess windows has some "generic" ide, pci
>and vga drivers that will allow you to boot from most hardware.
>
>This method seems to make sense to me BUT it has the problem of
>changing your windows install into a state where it may not boot AT
>ALL. So definitely dd it first.
>
>hth
>
>A
>
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