
Use a real Windows 7 partition in Virtualbox / KVM / VMware Player under Linux - DarkPlayer
http://fds-team.de/cms/articles/2013-12/use-a-real-windows-7-partition-in-virtualbox-kvm-vmware-player-u.html
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Nursie
Cool stuff.

Actually did something similar back in 2000. We built a dual-processor Pentium
II machine and installed Win2k and Redhat (IIRC), then with vmware and a bit
of hacking we were able to make each one VM bootable inside the other. Just
for the sake of it really. Fun :)

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mig39
This is actually a feature of VMware Fusion for the Mac. Or at least it used
to be.

If you had a dual-boot system with Windows (Bootcamp) and Mac OS X, you could
run the Bootcamp partition under VMware Fusion for most things, and reboot
into native Windows if necessary (for some games).

~~~
manojlds
Still there and the main reason I use Fusion

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jackweirdy
I had the horrifying experience of doing this with Windows Vista. It was at
the point where XP's Hardware Abstraction Layer had been depreciated, but
there wasn't any documentation for what to use instead. It was really messy.
Every time I booted in a VM it thought it was an unlicensed copy, but when I
booted from the physical machine it didn't see any problems. I still have no
idea what caused that.

~~~
trentmb
I'm going to guess that Windows Activation saw a different hardware config
under the VM, so it thought it was running on a completely different machine.

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ubercow13
I remember doing something similar to diagnose a boot problem a while ago. It
was much quicker mounting the partition on a live cd, changing something,
unmounting and trying to boot in vbox, then repeating, than it would have been
to use any other method, if nothing else because it sidestepped repeatedly
waiting for my the slow real mobos bios to post

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fest
Another way to make use of 3D graphics in Windows, from Linux seems to be
booting Windows VM in xen, and passing through a spare GPU to Windows. I'm
aching to try this out as I am frustrated working with SolidWorks in
VirtualBox VM and I have finally upgraded my desktop PC with hardware which
should in theory support this.

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tck42
I'm afraid I don't understand - how does all this avoid reactivation? If
[http://superuser.com/questions/597267/what-causes-
windows-7-...](http://superuser.com/questions/597267/what-causes-
windows-7-activation-requests) is correct, then just keeping the disk serial
the same won't cut it, right?

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rjzzleep
before i switched back from linux to mac i took out my ssd and put it in a
thunderbolt case. i can now boot it directly and everything works perfectly or
i use virtualbox. sadly the permissions are a bit questionable(see below).

Also, one caveat is that the virtualbox vm write tops out somewhere around
100-120 mbyte/s (idr), while the boot from linux gives me 360.

    
    
        sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~myuser/Library/VirtualBox/VDI/raw-linux.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk1
        sudo chmod 666 /dev/disk1*

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incompatible
I'm puzzled about how this would help with 3D graphics. Wouldn't Windows still
be running the same way in a VM, regardless of where its files are located?

~~~
w1ntermute
The idea's that you can boot into "native" Windows when you need to do stuff
with 3D graphics, but boot into virtualized Windows when you don't. This way,
you can use the same install for both purposes, allowing you to save storage
space and avoid having two different Windows installs that you have to setup
and maintain.

~~~
yareally
Xen has native GPU passthrough, though I've never tried it with a non-vm
partition (it is possible to do so though).

~~~
w1ntermute
Is the performance comparable?

~~~
wtallis
Yes. It's implemented using a hardware IOMMU so that transfers between the PCI
device and the VM can be properly mapped from the VM's address space to the
host's physical address space. There's slight overhead on PCI transactions,
but everything happening on the GPU is exactly the same, because the VM is
running the same standard Windows drivers. The only real complication is that
it removes the GPU from the host's control, so it's easiest to set up on
systems with more than one GPU.

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okal
Did something similar with an Ubuntu guest a few years back. Fun times.

