Virtual Machine Question

Hi everybody.

I got my laptop set to dual boot.  Most of the time I use Vista.  The other OS, XP I use it rarely, only to check my corporate mail.

So I was wondering if it is possible to boot the another OS (XP) in a Virtual Machine running on Vista...

Thanks,
Raptor

PS: Pls do not start a XP vs Vista war over here.  I use Vista mainly because is the one preinstalled with the laptop, and having no issues nor performance imparements I'm OK with it.  I don't use the XP because it is set up with very restrictive corporate policies, a ridiculous and poorly managed domain and a pain-in-the-@ss software installer automator, and I being a field engineer it's something I don't want. Period

Unfortunately Microsoft Virtual PC does not support actual hard drives being used in virtual machines. Most virtualization software prefers to use virtual hard disks as well.

However, I do know that at least VMWare Workstation does support using an existing hard drive (and partitioning) to be used inside a virtual machine. Last I checked you do lose some properies of the drive, especially if it is sata and not IDE. This shouldn't be as big an issue with Win XP as it can be with linux setups. The bad news, Workstation isn't free. I don't know if their VMWare Player, which is free (? I think), does have this same capability or not.

All you need to do is perform a Physical to Virtual conversion of the partition that is housing XP. There are different ways of capturing the image. Acronis True Image claims make this simple. I also read that VMWare can use or convert a Ghost image to a virtual image.

I'm pretty sure you could use the VMware Converter tool to image the XP machine and then use the image in Vmware player, all for free.