[SOLVED] Boot Windows in emulator?

[sburk]

Is it possible to boot a previously installed copy of windows thats on the same hard drive as ubuntu in an emulator? That way i dont need to reinstall all my programs especially because i cant get wine to work at all. and plus i dont need to restart everytime i wanna use windows for somethin linux doesnt offer.

[wszachau]

The simple answer to that question is "No". There is probably a "Yes", but as far as I know, it's going to be very complicated, and you don't sound like a linux expert, so I won't even go there.
If you need to be able to run Windows and Linux in parallel, install VirtualBox, then re-install Windows as a virtual machine and off you go. That's what we use in our company on many computers (including mine) and it works like a charm. You will need sufficient memory for this, depending on the version of Windows you want to run.

[TaZMAniac]

There is a way of doing it.
I wrote a short tutorial on doing something similar awhile back for a few friends looking to do the same thing.
It will take up a lot of hard drive space and takes a bit of work.

What you will want to do is use VirtualBox within Linux to be your virtual host server for Windows. Make sure to get VBox from the official site and not from the repositories as the repo version has some features missing.

You will migrate Windows into VBox but it will be a bit of a task because Windows doesn't play nice. It will require a few registry hacks and bit of work but can be done.
I see they have a nice tutorial written up at the VirtualBox website;
Migrate_Windows - VirtualBox

Be advised that playing games in Windows using VirtualBox is not an option due to the graphics interface. VirtualBox emulates a video card and does not use your real video card for rendering graphics.
It is however, good for general programs and video editing software.

Good luck and ignore any put you down comments you may come across on this forum. For the most part, 99.9% of the members here will do all they can to help you accomplish your goals.

[wszachau]

<snip> ...ignore any put you down comments you may come across on this forum. For the most part, 99.9% of the members here will do all they can to help you accomplish your goals.

Dear TaZMAniac,
even you admit in your post that this is anything but straight forward. My post was not intended as a "put-you-down", but as the simplest/shortest way to get to a working solution. Please think before you start flaming others.