running windows applications and making use of existing ms windows installation

[Eric Anderson]

On 11/28/06 06:59, Tore Lund wrote:
> mato wrote:
>> Do you think I could supply raw disk device directly to Qemu ??
> 
> As I understand it, you HAVE TO use a raw disk for qemu at present,
> though I cannot recall the reason for it right now.  But this will not
> help you "make use of existing Windows (XP) installation".  I believe
> the OS itself, at the very least, must be installed by qemu - correct me
> if I am wrong.
> 
> In any case, the following instructions work for me:
> 
> http://www.freebsdforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44204


First, I could not get Qemu to boot a raw disk device, or slice.  I 
didn't try very hard though.

Second - VMWare Workstation 5.5 (for Windows) will allow booting a raw 
device, and I am actually using (right now) a vmware machine booting to 
my local hard drive, which has dual booting set up (one partition 
windows, one FreeBSD).  Natively I usually run FreeBSD, however 
sometimes I boot into Windows, use it for a while, and simultaneously 
boot up my vmware machine, which loads the regular FreeBSD partition 
that I normally use, and boots up.  I use X (1920x1200 resolution even), 
networking, etc, just like normal.  It's very fast (hard to tell the 
difference from native).

A few disclaimers:
- I have an Intel Core 2 Duo, which has virtualization on the processer, 
which VMWare workstation takes advantage of.
- You need enough memory for Windows, and FreeBSD.  Windows itself will 
want 512mb, so plan accordingly.
- You'll need to tweak some xorg.conf settings (or use a separate 
xorg.conf like I do) when inside the vmware workstation.


Also (as the forum points out in the link above), win4bsd is pretty 
good.  The latest stable version is pretty decent.  I run Quicken 2006 
inside it, and it does indeed work well, and is pretty snappy.


Eric



-- 
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Eric Anderson        Sr. Systems Administrator        Centaur Technology
An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
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