
Booting a physical Windows 10 disk on Linux using VirtualBox - jamieweb
https://www.jamieweb.net/blog/booting-a-physical-windows-10-disk-using-virtualbox-on-linux/
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Jaruzel
This seems complicated. You can download a copy of of Windows 10 in ISO format
via this link:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-
download/windows10I...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-
download/windows10ISO)

(You need to be using a non-Windows PC otherwise that link will redirect to
the Windows Media Creation Tool[1])

Then just install it into a new VM in VirtualBox. It won't activate, and it
will nag you about this, but it will still stay fully usable, you just wont be
able to change small things like the colour scheme. Which is perfectly fine if
it's a crash-and-burn VM for testing.

\---

[1] Or just change your browser user-agent to report linux.

~~~
jwilk
Even better, MS offers free VMs for testing their browsers:

[https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/tools/v...](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-
edge/tools/vms/)

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hddherman
The same could be achieved using QEMU/KVM by adding the physical disk path
(/dev/disk/by-id/<drive ID here>) as a storage device using whatever method
you fancy.

I have used this technique quite a bit and it is very handy in dual/multi boot
systems where I need to run the second OS while using my main OS. Or install
one to an external drive and use it elsewhere later on.

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titanix2
A similar technic also exists to use Windows in VirtualBox on MacOS.
[http://danielphil.github.io/windows/virtualbox/osx/2015/08/2...](http://danielphil.github.io/windows/virtualbox/osx/2015/08/25/virtualbox-
boot-camp.html)

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8_hours_ago
I did this many years ago with a dual boot computer and Windows (7 iirc) kept
complaining about needing to be reactivated when I’d switch between running
natively and virtualized. Has that been fixed on Windows 10?

~~~
nhauz
If you substantially change the hardware of your computer, you are supposed to
get a new licence because it's like it is another computer. It's not a bug but
a feature.

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jamieweb
In my case, the first time I fully booted the Windows 10 disk was in the VM. I
wonder if this counted as a 'change' or does it think that the VM is the
original hardware now?

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8_hours_ago
I bet that if you tried to boot the disk naitively then Windows would want to
be activated.

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jamieweb
Maybe! Windows seems to be activated just fine in the VM.

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Rjevski
I once did something similar on a Linux & Windows dual-boot where the Linux
partition was bootable both as bare-metal _and_ under Windows in VirtualBox.

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zamadatix
That's what this is just the other way around on the VM portion.

I have my current computer set up in a 4 way: Windows native, Linux Native,
Windows disk in KVM VM, Linux disk in Hyper-V VM. Hyper-V was probably the
easiest, just click the radio and select the disk.

