Switch from Windows to Linux and KEEP Windows

Converting to Linux can be a painful process. Something that you can do to make the transition easier would be to virtualize your existing Windows system, making it so that you can not only dual boot Windows and Linux, but you could also boot that very same Windows instance inside a virtual machine.

Note: If you are running XP home, or pro and you are not using a corporate edition, you will need to re-authorize your copy of Windows. Be sure to do that within 3 days, however wait until the end of the process to ensure that it doesn't have to be done more than once.

There are a few things that need to be done to prepare your Windows desktop for it's new dual role. Before we begin, this HOW-TO assumes that you split your primary master IDE (hda) hard drive into two or more partitions when you installed Ubuntu. It also assumes that your first partition (hda1) is Windows XP.

First, in Windows; go to the Hardware Profile screen. You can get there by performing the following steps.

* Right Click My Computer, and select Properties
* Click the Hardware tab
* Click Hardware Profile

Create a new Hardware profile, and label it Virtual.

Next, reboot Windows selecting the new hardware profile "Virtual". Open Internet Explorer, and go to Microsoft.com. Search for knowledge base article 314082 (or click [ HERE ] for a direct link). Follow the instructions at the bottom of the page to create the Mergeide.reg file. Double click that file allowing it to write to the registry. What this does is insert generic IDE drivers into Windows which will allow it to boot on alternate hardware rather than what you have on your system board. Without this, Windows will just blue screen when you attempt to boot it in a VM.

Reboot the system and select Linux.

Now, we need to add your user account to the disk group so VMWare will have access to your partitions.

This can be done by opening a terminal window and entering the following commands:

* Open the terminal by clicking Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
o sudo usermod -a -G disk $USER
* Once your user account is in the disk group, log out and back in. You can verify that your account was added successfully by issuing:
o grep disk /etc/group

Then looking for your username to be at the end of the line returned.

Next we need to find a way to bootstrap Windows without touching the boot sector. For this we'll use xpquick from bootdisk.com [ LINK ] which provides the NT boot sector and will locate your Windows partition that we define in a later step. Download xpquick.exe, and unzip it. This can be done by following these steps:

* Open a terminal by clicking Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
o apt-get install unzip
o unzip xpquick.exe

Once you have xpquick.IMA, delete xpquick.exe.

Install VMWare server from the partner repositories by enabling that repository in Synaptic Package Manager which is located under System -> Administration.

In Synaptic Package Manager, select Settings -> Repositories -> Third-Party Software, and check the boxes for the partner repos. It's often handy to also select the Universe, Multiverse, and restricted repositories under the Ubuntu Software tab. After hitting close, press the Reload button to refresh packages. Once that completes, search for VMWare Server and mark it for installation. Once it's marked, click Apply and VMWare server will be installed.

In VMWare Server, create a new virtual machine. This can be accomplished by following these steps:

Open VMWare Server by clicking Applications -> System Tools -> VMWare Server Console.

* Connect to "local host
* Click "Create a New Virtual Machine"
* Select Custom Configuration
* Select the defaults other than those specified below:
o One CPU
o 512MB RAM
o Networking
+ Create a NAT Network device.
* Use a physical disk
o Use individual partitions
o Select the HPFS/NTFS partition

Close out of VMWare server for the next few steps.

Using a text editor, browse to the new virtual machine path and open the .vmx file. Change every reference of scsi0 including scsi0.0 to ide0 or ide0.0. Save changes, and close the file.

Still using the text editor, open the .vmdk file. Change "buslogic" to "ide". Save your changes and close out of the editor.

Now we need to copy the xpquick.IMA file to the folder containing the virtual machine. Rename it in the process to xpquick.img.
Re-open VMWare Server and select your virtual machine. Go to the settings of the VM, and change the floppy location to image, and set the image to xpquick.img. Also, make sure that the floppy drive is configured to connect at power on.

Boot your newly created VM, and select the "Virtual" hardware profile. You'll need to reboot a few more times to get through all of the hardware detection, then you should be at a desktop. Unfortunately, you'll have no mouse yet.

Press control-alt to get out of the VM context, and tell VMWare to install VMWare Tools. This can be done by clicking VM -> Install VMWare tools. You'll need to click in the window again to give keyboard control back to the VM. Walk your way through the installation using the tab and enter keys. Once it's complete, reboot when prompted.

Once you are back into Windows using your "Virtual" hardware profile, go ahead and re-activate Windows if necessary. Also, go through and disable some of the hardware specific services that were installed to support the non-virtual hardware.

So, there it is you now have a dual mode Windows XP. If you are running Pro, you can tell the virtual machine to start up when you boot your computer, then you can just RDP into it using Terminal Server Client which is located under Applications -> Internet, or you can download my RDP script which can be found in the Linux section.

Check back often, next up is how to configure Virtual Windows XP Pro to use Samba, and share My Documents with the Linux host!