Dual boot XP and Kubuntu?

[dibl]

I wasn't impressed that Unity could do anything for me, since I only need Windows for a couple of proprietary genealogy apps. My real video card is a very nice Nvidia GTX-480, but of course that's not what VMware provides to Windows. Windows sees a "VMware SVGA 3D (MS Corp. WDDM)", which is not exactly a fireball but it does allow Aero if you want it. I was forced to adopt VirtualBox last year for some months, when the sid base dropped the "Big Kernel Lock" and there was quite a lag until VMware Player got a patch that let it build the modules. Although I was able to install and run my Win 7 OS on VBox fully satisfactorily, I was stung by the WGA thing, because I had previously registered Win 7 from the VMware Player installation. (I could not get VBox to convert the .vmdk to a VBox VM -- wasted a lot of time on that little project). So I had to learn how to get 120 days Win 7 "evaluation" time by re-setting the 30 days timeout 3 times. Happily a VMware patch came along in time to prevent a reinstallation. I did not find VBox as easy to configure, I don't remember if I ever got bridged networking to work with Samba (networking to the Linux filesystem) like it does with VMware, and its video interface seems less integrated with the KDE environment. So I'm very happy to be back on VMware Player.

[SteveRiley]

Isn't Aero the accelerated part of Windows video? If so, that would make sense, because you'd have to accelerated video drivers conflicting over screen real estate.

When not in Unity mode, VMware Player does support Aero and desktop composition. I've actually seen it before. I suspect there's something lingering from the VirtualBox-to-VMware conversion. I don't need Aero bad enough to reinstall my entire Windows VM, though. So I'll live with it as is.

[GreyGeek]

Ah, turns out that VMware's Unity feature disables Aero.....

Isn't Aero the accelerated part of Windows video? If so, that would make sense, because you'd have to accelerated video drivers conflicting over screen real estate.

[SteveRiley]

Ah, turns out that VMware's Unity feature disables Aero anyway, so I'm not going to spend any more time on this. In general, although there appear to be fewer knobs and dials to twiddle with VMware player, it feels better integrated with the host OS than VirtualBox.

[SteveRiley]

Finally got it sorted. Didn't even need to go the long route of booting into recovery, according to the steps here. I simply started the Windows 7 VM in Virtual Box and then made the indicated registry change. Go to:

HKLM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LSI_SAS

and change Start to 0 (zero).

Then I went back to first method, using VBoxManage:

vboxmanage clonehd "Windows 7 Ultimate.vdi" "Windows 7 Ultimate.vmdk" --format vmdk

This took a little while.

Finally, I created a new virtual machine in VMware Player. When prompted for where to install the operating system from, I selected the "install later" choice. I followed the prompts to configure the virtual machine. I selected "single file" for the VMDK and configured the other settings to closely match the VDI. Once that finished, I copied the converted VMDK file over the "empty" one that VMware Player created. I booted the VM, and no blue screen!

It went through a couple rounds of driver installations and reboots. Then I installed VMware tools. Everything looks fine, except Aero isn't working.

[dibl]

Right -- works with Win 7 the same:



I don't see a problem with Control Panel, unless you try to mess with hardware (which is just virtual pieces, after all).

[SteveRiley]

Ah hah, this looks promising... some kind of patch required if a Windows 7 VM uses SATA controller for the disk.

[SteveRiley]

OK, so the simple procedure of using VBoxManage didn't work -- Windows 7 crashes when the VM starts. Now, in parallel, I'm trying a variety of approaches, including simplifying the VM's configurations (disabling acceleration and such), OVA/OVF export/import.

[GreyGeek]

Ah, now I remember why I switched from VM to VB.... the creation of virtual two Internet ports (as shown by ifconfig) during boot up. That may have been because I used NAT instead of bridging. Steve, does bridging create two Internet ports during boot up?

Anyway, theoretically (because I haven't tried it yet), to convert a physical (and, some claim, a virtual) drive to a virtual drive one must use P2V. The 4.02 version of VMware inadvertently omitted the ISO for those that tool, but a VMware employee gave links to where they could be downloaded from, which requires a free account to access the WMware community forum:
http://communities.vmware.com/servle...linux-1.tar.gz
http://communities.vmware.com/servle...linux-2.tar.gz
The VMware employee who gave the links said all one has to do is unzip the tars in the VMware directory and then navigate to that directory when asked the location of the tools iso file.

So, my wife will be gone all day tomorrow so I can devote it to installing VMware and seeing IF it is possible to import a VB guest into VMware Player.

P.S. -- I am also going to try importing my Win8 guest OS as well as my XP guest OS. And, since this box is dual booted with Win7 I may try to import my physical win7 installation into VMware as a guest OS. Wouldn't that be the cat's meow! Running XP, Win7 and Win8 apps from the Linux desktop simultaneously!

[SteveRiley]

Sigh... the version of VMware's converter that runs under Linux dates from 2009. The newer ones are Windows binaries. And upon closer examination, there's no mention of support for VirtualBox format.

So I'm currently in the process of using VBoxManage to manually convert the Windows 7 VM on my T520 from VirtualBox (.vdi) to VMware (.vmdk). I'll report back here when I'm done.

[SteveRiley]

Now I am going to find out if my XP guest OS can export from VB and import to VM.

Try VMware's free vCenter Converter. I used that to convert a physical Windows 7 installation to a VMware VM and it performed flawlessly. Supposedly it will do the same for VMs in other formats, too.

[The Liquidator]

Well, nothing is perfect, but using bridging instead of NAT would resolve my complaints, and smooth integration with KDE is too good to ignore. Now I am going to find out if my XP guest OS can export from VB and import to VM.

If you find a way to do this GG please let us know as I will probably follow suit

[GreyGeek]

Well, nothing is perfect, but using bridging instead of NAT would resolve my complaints, and smooth integration with KDE is too good to ignore. Now I am going to find out if my XP guest OS can export from VB and import to VM.

[SteveRiley]

Had to force kill the player and the VM process. But the VM shows no damage. Whew!

[SteveRiley]

Uh oh... don't try opening the Control Panel when VMware Unity mode is enabled. I just crashed the VM but the player won't shut down, CPU utilization shot through the roof, and my fan sounds like turbocharger...