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Install Debian in VMware AND dual booting with XP

Ask for help with issues regarding the Installations of the Debian O/S.
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caleb
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Install Debian in VMware AND dual booting with XP

#1 Post by caleb »

So... basically, I want my cake AND I want to eat it too...

I use Windows XP currently, because of the apps and other various software that I need access to... I'd love to make the switch to Debian and I'm starting to make the switch with baby steps...

I've set my system up with a VMware image so far, and everything works fine... after recompiling a kernel and vmware tools. What I would REALLY like to do is... Dual boot my system with Debian, and access that physical disk in VMware when I don't feel like truly rebooting the system and being stuck in one of these OS's.

I remember back in the day... when I first starting using Linux, this was Redhat around 98, I had a dual boot system running Linux as a host and booting Windows ( 98 ) as needed. All I had to do was create different hardware profiles for Windows during boot, as the system was booted I chose Profile 1 or 2 based on whether I was launching Windows natively or in VMware. Once Windows was installed and configured for the different profiles everything worked great...

How do I setup different hardware profiles in Debian?

My only guess and after days of trying to dig up some How-tos on google and what not... the only guess I came up with is to recompile the kernel under each load and select the appropriate kernel during boot... I was hoping for some advice in this region before I began a very long and drawn out process...

Thanks for the help...

hkoster1
Posts: 1264
Joined: 2006-12-18 10:10

#2 Post by hkoster1 »

Frankly, I don't have a clue as to what you want to accomplish... Let me just enumerate a few possibilities:

Dual-booting, as we understand it here, means booting both Linux and another OS like Windows from different bootable partitions with the help of a boot manager like GRUB or LILO. There's no need to have VMware in this case.

Should you wish to use VMware, then you could single-boot one OS, install a VMware programme in it and run the other OS as a VM. Clearly, you could single-boot Linux and run Windows in a VMware VM; or the reverse.

Now, from your OP some additional intriguing combinations seem indicated, such as single-booting Linux, running Windows in a VMware VM, and -- get this -- installing VMware in the Windows VM and then running Linux in it. We wouldn't call this triple-booting, but you get the idea. Of course, there's also the combination Linux (Windows (Linux)), using obvious notation; and so on to greater depths of recursion. I haven't actually tried this with VMware, but doing something like it with the rival Parallels programme was a lot of fun (and a big mess).

A final possibility is that you wish to copy an existing VM to a real second bootable partition, be it Linux or Windows. I can't speak for Windows, but doing that with a Debian VM hardly seems worth the effort when compared with a new install. There would certainly be a bunch of needed adjustments as your real hardware would differ from the virtual hardware of the VM.

Is there anything in the foregoing that you recognize as what you want to accomplish? Or would you like to rephrase such that we can get a handle on what it is that you actually want to do?
Real Debian users don't do chat...

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caleb
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#3 Post by caleb »

let's try the rephrase... and thanks for the response...

My end goal here is to have Debian installed on a physical partition in my laptop, and Windows on another partition - the traditional dual boot setup. However, I also want to be able to access my Debian partition while I am in Windows, through VMware. There are times (at work mostly) when I am forced into using Windows as my primary OS, however I want to be able to still devote some time to running Debian. And... there are other times (at home usually) when I don't want to look at Windows, and would prefer to run Debian... So, I want both... I want Debian installed on a physical partition and there are times when I want to run Windows and still access Debian through VMware - ideally, the same Debian partition.

I had tried this a few days back however Xserver would crash miserably and I would have to reconfigure it in order to get it working. So... when I physically booted into Debian everything would work fine, then accessing the same install through VMware Xserver would crash... Basically, it was crashing anytime I changed the hardware configuration by either physically booting or booting through VMware.

I am guessing this is normal since VMware emulates hardware, so when physically booting Debian it sees the real laptop hardware and when usign VMware to boot it - it sees the emulated hardware and chokes. Once it is configured for either setup it works fine, the problems come in when you change.

So, I was hoping to find a way to tailor Debian so that during boot up I could select a hardware configuration that was consistent with either being physically booted or accessed through VMware - and avoid all the nasty little problems I have been getting. I remember being able to do this in Windows, by selecting a hardware profile... However, I have seen nothing that would be similar in Linux - I am hoping that perhaps recompiling the kernel in each load would help... that's my next experiment anyways...

thanks for the response, and I hope this explanation was a little clearer...

rduke
Posts: 94
Joined: 2007-02-08 19:07
Location: Quito, Ecuador

#4 Post by rduke »

This is what you want.

The link is dead now but I had a copy of the page squirelled away.

I did this, so it works, but the problem is that XP wil not run in the VM, as it thinks you've pirated it to another machine. They say you can call MS to validate the setup for you. I just said fuggit.

Here it is...


Scott Bronson
32 bits of unsigned fury
Running VMWare on a Physical Partition 66

Posted by Scott Bronson on 07/18/2006

This article describes how to set up VMWare on a pre-existing Windows partition.

VMWare is an incredibly useful piece of software. Problem is, it feels like it's perched on the tip of an eggshell. Any change to its environment tends to cause it to fall over, isolating all your data in the VM until you can find the time to get it working again. It's not fun to trust important data to such a brittle environment.

This article describes how to solve this by running VMWare on a physical disk partition. That way, when VMWare dies, you just boot into your Windows partition and continue working as usual. The convenience of VMWare, the reliability of dual-boot, what's not to like?

Benefits:

* Your data is still safe even if VMWare never works again.
* You can use a pre-existing Windows partition under VMWare.

Drawbacks:

* You can't suspend or snapshot the virtual machine.

Update 3 Aug: This article originally claimed that VMWare Server didn't support sound. As Gunnar Johansson says below, it actually does. Go to Virtual Machine Settings, click Add, and add a Sound Device. Easy!

Prepare the Disk

I'm running Ubuntu Dapper on an IBM ThinkPad T-42p. The Linux partition is on /dev/hda1 and the XP partition is on /dev/hda3 (it's actually better to put Windows on hda1 so you can have a C: disk; see Notes below).

1. Set up a dual-boot partition. I find it's easiest to first partition the disk, then install Windows, then install Linux. Use the Grub boot loader. Make sure everything works 100%.
2. Make sure the hostnames for your Windows and Linux partitons are different! In a dual-boot environment, it's very common to give each partition the same name. Of course, this is bad when both partitions are running simultaneously!
3. Turn off the Grub timeout. In /boot/grub/menu.lst, comment out the timeout line:

# timeout=30

Normally Grub waits for a few seconds and then boots into a particular partition. While setting up the virtual machine, booting into the wrong partition could irrevocably destroy your Unix partition! So, for now, we need to ensure that Grub won't do anything automatically. You can re-enable the timeout after setting up the boot disk below.
4. If you're going to run VMWare as a regular user, you need to ensure the user has permission to access the physical partition. On Ubuntu/Debian, this should work:

adduser bronson disk

Beta versions of VMWare Server had a bug where the GUI would hang unless you ran it as root. Version 1.0 appears to have fixed this bug.
5. Install VMWare Server.

Prepare Windows

1. Boot into the Windows.
2. Create a separate hardware profile and install the drivers.

Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Hardware Profiles.
Click Copy, then name the copy you just created VMWare.

You should now have two hardware profiles, Physical and VMWare.
3. Booting into the wrong hardware profile can be disastrous. Ensure that "Wait until I select a hardare profile" is selected.
4. Remove anything that could cause trouble. For instance, even if disabled in the VMWare profile, Lenovo's pre-installed ThinkPad software crashes under VMWare. Remove it -- you won't miss it. Try to make your system as close to bare vanilla Windows as you can.
5. Reboot into the Linux.

Create the Virtual Machine
Launch VMWare and connect to Local Host.

1. File -> New -> New Virtual Machine.
2. Select "Custom", Next
3. Select your operating system (mine is WinXP Pro), Next
4. Give it a name like "WinXP", Next
5. Specify One processor, Next
6. Choose public or private (on a single-user machine this doesn't matter), Next
7. Select the memory to devote to the virtual machine. The more memory you devote, the better the guest OS runs (unless you exhaust your physical machine's memory) but the longer it takes to suspend and resume. 512 MB is a pretty useful number.
8. Select your network connection, Next. If you want the virtual machine to be able to connect to the Internet, you will need to select either bridging or NATing. Since my laptop spends a lot of time roaming among wifi access points, I choose NATing. That way, once the Unix network connection is configured, the windows connection happily piggybacks on top of it. Also, the Windows operating system is hidden behind a NAT which should be a lot safer. Of course, this means that Windows can only open outgoing connections, not incoming. If you're setting this up in a server environment where the network is fairly static, bridging is probably the better choice.
9. Leave SCSI set to BusLogic, Next
10. Use Physical Disk, Next
11. Use individual partitions, Next
12. Select 2 partitions: the Windows partition (of course), and your regular boot partition so that VMWare can access your bootloader's second and third stages. If you don't select your boot partition as well as the Windows partition, LILO and Grub probably won't work.
13. Specify the place to save the VM
14. Finish!

On your new Virtual Machine:

1. Click on Settings -> Hardware -> Floppy and turn off "Connect at power on". We'll fix this later in "Setting up the boot disk."

Fire Up the Virtual Machine

1. Turn on the virtual machine. Remain sharp because the next step is important.
2. At the lilo prompt, make sure you boot windows! There's no way for the computer to tell if a partition is currently in use so, if the VM starts booting your currently-mounted Unix partition, shut it down ASAP! I can't stress this enough: if you run two OSes from the same partiton, you will almost certainly corrupt the partition. Make sure you boot Windows.
3. At the Physical/VMWare prompt, choose VMWare. This is also important -- if you accidentally use the wrong harware profile, it can take days to undo the damage.
4. Log in normally. You will be assaulted by all kinds of "Found New Hardware" dialogs. Click cancel! Try to change things as little as possible.
5. Install VMWare Tools.

From VMWare menus: VM -> Install VMWare Tools

Click OK, then you should see an InstallShield installer launch in the virtual machine. Use InstallShield to ensure the tools are successfully installed.
6. Reboot the virtual machine (click Yes to the InstallShield prompt).
7. Set up all the hardware devices. Choose your screen resolution, ensure networking works, etc. At this point, the virtual machine should work great. You also might want to:
* Turn off the Windows screen saver:
Control Panels -> Display Properties -> Screen Saver
* Turn off all power saving settings:
Power -> Turn off monitor: never, Turn off hard disks: never, etc.
8. Shut down the virtual machine, quit VMWare, then shut down Unix.
9. Boot into the physical Windows partition. Make sure to select the Physical hardware profile.
10. Ensure that the physical machine still works 100% correctly. You should see a number of new devices installed for the VMWare profile, but they should not cause trouble as they will all be disabled in the physical profile.

You should now have two happily co-existing operating systems. Windows should behave the same whether you booted into the physical machine or the virtual one.
If this section is confusing, you might find some help here.
Set up the Boot Disk
It's a pain to tell Grub which partiton to boot each time you fire up your virtual machine. And, if you make a mistake, horrible disk corruption will surely follow. So let's get rid of that prompt so the virtual machine goes straight into Windows each time. We will create a boot floppy image and tell VMWare to always boot from that. It's the same concept as using a Linux rescue disk.

1. Ensure you're booted into Linux and the VM is powered off.
2. Open the VM Settings window, click on Hardware -> Floppy
* Select "Use a floppy image"
* Click "Create" and create a new image. Call it bootdisk.img
* Click "Connect at Power On"
3. Now add grub to the disk image file:

$ dd if=/lib/grub/i386-pc/stage1 of=bootdisk.img count=1
$ dd if=/lib/grub/i386-pc/stage2 of=bootdisk.img seek=1

This is for Debian/Ubuntu. On Gentoo, the Grub files are found in /usr/lib. You can try running "locate stage1" if you can't find the stage1 and stage2 files.
4. We'll need the non-filesystem grub disk for later so back it up.

$ cp bootdisk.img grubdisk.img

5. Now start up the VM. You should be dropped straight into Grub.
6. Try booting Windows using:

grub> root (hd0,2)
grub> chainloader +1
grub> boot

Of course, you need replace (hd0,2) with the location of your own windows partition. You can find the exact commands to use in /boot/grub/menu.lst.
7. You should now be booted into your Windows virtual machine. If not, you need to figure out what went wrong before proceeding.

We will now modify the boot disk to run those commands automatically whenever the VM is powered on.

1. You should still be running the Windows virtual machine.
2. Format the boot floppy.
1. Desktop -> My Computer
2. Right click the "A:" icon and choose "Format..."
3. Click start. The defaults are fine.
3. Shut down the VM
4. Mount the image under Linux and copy in the Grub files. You may need to be root to do some of these operations.

$ mount bootdisk.img /mnt -o loop
$ mkdir -p /mnt/boot/grub
$ cp /boot/grub/stage[12] /boot/grub/fat_stage1_5 /boot/grub/menu.lst /mnt/boot/grub
$ vi /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst # remove the cruft; see next step
$ chmod -R a-w /mnt/boot
$ umount /mnt

5. This is what my bootdisk's menu.lst file looks like:

default 0
timeout 0
hiddenmenu
title Windows XP
root (hd0,2)
makeactive
chainloader +1

6. Click "Edit Virtual Machine Settings" -> Hardware -> Floppy 1 and tell VMWare to boot using grubdisk.img (the copy we made earlier). Click OK.
7. Turn on the virtual machine. You will be dropped into the Grub prompt. Don't type anything.
8. Switch the floppy in the virtual floppy drive to bootdisk.img. VM menu -> Settings -> Hardware -> Floppy 1 and type the name into the textbox. The disk is switched when you hit OK.
9. Type the setup command:

grub> setup (fd0)

10. Reset the virtual machine. VMWare will now try to boot from bootdisk.img instead of hda's master boot block, and bootdisk.img should send you straight into Windows.
11. Now that VMWare isn't using your master Grub configuration, and there's no danger of VMWare booting into the Unix partition, you can re-enable the timeout in /boot/grub/menu.lst.

Unfortunately, you still need to deal with the Physical/VMWare hardware profile selector. I haven't figured out any good way of getting VMWare to automatically select the VMWare profile.

See http://www.openbg.net/sto/os/xml/grub.html if any part of setting up the boot disk is confusing. It offers a more generic version of these instructions.
The End!
You should now have a VMWare machine running on a physical partition. If VMWare ever dies, you can just dual boot into your Windows partition and continue working.
Drive Letters
As far as I can tell, because we're using a physical partition, we don't have any control over drive letters. If you install windows onto /dev/hda3, your main disk will be F: not C:. Generally this is only a problem for stupid Install Shield installers that try to install onto the nonexistant C: drive. Just remember to change the destination directory when installing. This isn't a problem caused running under the virtual machine, it's because you're running Windows on a partition other than the first one. You'd see it when running dual-booted as well.
Notes / TODOs

* It's really useful to share your Linux home directory using Samba and mount it on the windows partition. This howto is already long enough; I might tell how to do this in a different blog entry.
* It would be nice to have VMWare automatically select the VMWare hardware profile in the profile selector.
* A friend tried to get VMWare running on his ThinkPad T-43 but ran into problems with the SATA hard disk.

* Tags vmware, windows
* Meta 66 comments, permalink, rss, atom

Comments

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1.
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Gunnar Johansson on 08/03/2006

This looks like a perfect setup, and it’s just what I wanted! Unfortunately, I can’t make the natively installed system boot when run in VMWare. It shows the windows logo followed by a blue screen and a reboot. I’ve also tried the solution at http://diaryproducts.net/about/vmware/m ... _to_vmware, but to no avail. So I guess my particular hardware (dell inspiron 8600) is too different from the virtual hardware to be able to boot windows. If anyone finds a way around this boot problem, please post it here!

Thanks,
2.
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Gunnar Johansson on 08/03/2006

By the help of this thread I was able to solve the problem: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-24 ... art-0.html.

The trick is to add the drivers for all natively supported IDE controllers in windows by http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314082. Since I’m running SP2, I used the drivers found in sp2.cab instead of drivers.cab in step 2 in the directions (although I’m not sure this step is really necessary).

According to a post in the above thread, this solution could be adapted to add support for SATA drives as well, and might help your friend with the T-43.

As for windows activation, you’re asked to reactive when booting into the VMWare setup (since the hardware has changed!). I simply rebooted into native (physical) setup and reactivated with the same hardware setup. This seems to validate the VMWare setup as well.

Thanks again,
3.
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Gunnar Johansson on 08/03/2006

Note: Sound works perfectly for me, I simply added a sound device for the virtual machine with auto detection, and voila :-)
4.
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Tom on 08/06/2006

Thanks for the info Scott!

I just got this working on my ThinkPad T42 booting Windows XP Pro SP2. It took me quite a while to get passed this error occurring on bootup within the virtual machine however:
STOP: 0×0000007B (0xFAF7E528,0xC0000034,0×00000000,0×00000000)

After trying the suggestions that appear to have worked for Gunnar and others (MS KB Articles 316401, 314082, 249694), I still had the problem. I eventually found that by setting “scsi0.present” to “FALSE” in the vm config file (/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines//*.vmx”) I was able to boot.

Also, I’m using XOSL 1.1.5 (http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm) for a boot manager rather than Grub and it’s working just fine – no hard drive geometry issues. And it’s so pretty!

Upon first boot I was greeted with the Windows Product Activation crud. Windows wouldn’t let me login without first activating, so I couldn’t get VMware Tools installed. After a phone call to Microsoft, I got passed the product activation. On next boot inside the VM, I skipped the “New Hardware Found” stuff and was able to get VMware Tools installed.

Booting has been really really slow – looks like Windows keeps trying to read from the virtual CD ROM drive for some reason.
5.
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eXiDo0r on 08/07/2006

Hi!

I am sad to inform you that the Vmware Workstation does not work with the solution mentioned above on my machine.

In the ‘Create the virtual machine’ section there is no 6th step, but it is not a serious problem. But after choosing the individual partitions I got the error message: Failed to load partitions for device /dev/hda: Insufficient permission to access file. I gave myself to the disk group (Ubuntu Dapper),as requested.

Could you please report any suggestions?

Otherwise the howto seems for me to be great, I am sure who has a little bit more experience than me, will know the answer.
6.
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Bronson on 08/07/2006
Exidoor, check the permissions on your /dev/hda devices:

bronson@lyra:/$ ls -l /dev/hda*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 0 Aug 4 09:40 /dev/hda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 1 Aug 4 09:40 /dev/hda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 2 Aug 4 09:40 /dev/hda2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 3 Aug 4 09:40 /dev/hda3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 4 Aug 4 09:40 /dev/hda4
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 5 Aug 4 09:40 /dev/hda5
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 6 Aug 4 09:40 /dev/hda6

Each line should say “brw-rw” and “root disk”. If not then there’s your problem. You might temporarily fix it by running “chmod g+rw /dev/hda*” or “chgrp disk /dev/hda*”. Then you need to figure out why your disk devices are being created with the wrong user or group.

I guess step 6 was only in the beta release. That’s good to hear.
7.
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eXiDo0r on 08/07/2006

Hi!

I played a little bit, and it came to light, that if I make the VM run with my primary group, it’s not working. First I have to change group using the newgrp command, and make the VM run this way.

I would like to thank you for the useful HOWTO and the fast answer as well!

Happy VM! Bye
8.
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jacekmw on 08/08/2006

Hi, Thanks for posting this helpful guide.

I have recently installed VmWare Server 1.0 on my Debian Linux and try to play with it whenever time permits. Th emain idea is to get the Windows guest running mostly to access those crappy web sites that require IE … I have already running Win2K with the virtual disk, but was inspired by your post and have tried to configure another VM using my Win2K on /dev/hda1. I selected both partitions, hda1 and hda3 where grub is located for that VM. When I power it on, grub menu shows up, I select Windows, grub properly recognizes the partition {on root (hd0,0)}, but then says NTLDR is missing {chainloader +1}. When I reboot my T42p and try to boot it natively it works just fine. What could be the reason for this failure ? any suggestions, anyone ?

thanks

Jacek
9.
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david on 08/09/2006

Hi , very nice how to ! I’m tryng to get it working on my thinkpad R51. When i start the vm grub starts fine, then it freeze at the message “chainloader +1 …” and the “choose hardware profile” of winxp doesn’t come up . Do you have any suggestion ???

Thanks,

David
10.
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david on 08/09/2006

perhaps the problem is that even in the bios or when starting up, my monitor goes straight to a 1400×1050 resolution. I think this happened when I updated the bios (or the ati drivers, I don’t remember). Do you think this could be the problem ? Grub configuration is ok and when working natively everithing is fine and I can choose a Hardware profile. Partition selection is ok, settings are as for your suggestion and for vmware docs. Can’t find anything more on the internet.

Thanks for some suggestion,

David
11.
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Tom on 08/09/2006

I posted earlier that I was able to make this work on my IBM ThinkPad. And indeed it does! However, I’m running into problems with Microsoft’s Product Activation anti-piracy protection…

Each time I boot from one hardware profile to the other, Windows requires that I re-activate it. Internet reactivation only works once or twice and after that a phone call is required. So, if I boot it native, then boot under VMware, I have to call Microsoft within 3 days to re-activate. Clearly, this is a problem.

I opened a case with Microsoft on this. From what I understand, the Windows EULA expressly allows this type of setup (one or more installations of Windows on the same computer for booting within a virtual machine). Clearly, the OS was designed to support multiple hardware configurations, so I believe it is up to Microsoft to provide a solution that avoids the re-activation requirement in this case.

I’ve gotten through several layers of support people so far (all of which have been polite and professional thankfully). The person I spoke with today emailed me the following link describing product activation and how it works with OEM Windows using SLP (System Locked Pre-Installation) and retail Windows (regular activation).

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodte ... activ.mspx

This link isn’t particularly helpful except to describe how product activation works in detail. It does not describe any workarounds for this.

So, my case is being forwarded on to the next level which I should hear back from by next Thursday (8/17).

I highly encourage anyone else who runs into this to open your own case with Microsoft. Their support number is 1-800-936-5700. Tell them that your computer is consistently requiring you to re-activate it. This support number takes you to Microsoft’s fee-based support, however, take the time to very politely explain the problem in detail and you won’t be required to pay a support fee. Make sure they understand that the problem is with Windows product activation only – and not a problem with VMware. Make sure they know that Windows is operating perfectly when booted natively and when booted within VMware – except for the product re-activation requirement.
12.
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Bronson on 08/09/2006

David, that’s very strange. Are you sure you activated the proper partitions in VMWare? Or, maybe it’s a permissions problem and you should try running VMWare as root? If neither of these work, I would try setting up another virtual machine from scratch to see if the same thing happens.

Jacek, http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/redhat ... ssing.html ?

Tom, I haven’t run into that problem myself but it does concern me… Let us know if you find a solution?
13.
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Tom on 08/09/2006

I will. I’m curious why your machine is not running into the problem – perhaps the hardware profiles happen to be quite similar? Are you running an OEM version of Windows? Or did you start with a retail version?
14.
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Tom on 08/10/2006

Here’s another suggestion for how to setup the boot disk using Windows ntldr directly. I found this to be easier to do than working with grub.

1: Open the VM Settings window, click on “Floppy 1” in the “Hardware” tab
1: # Select “Use a floppy image”
1: # Click “Create” and create a new image. Call it bootdisk.img
1: # Make sure “Connect at Power On” is NOT checked.
1: # Click “OK”

2: Power on the VM. Make darn sure you select the right OS and hardware profile.

3: Open the VM Settings window, click on “Floppy 1” in the “Hardware” tab
3: # Make sure “Connected” is checked
3: # Click “OK”

4: Once booted in the VM, get a command prompt (Start -> Run -> “cmd”)

5: In the command prompt, run “format A:”. Don’t do a “quick” format, this needs to do a full format of the floppy. Unlike a real floppy though, the format will finish quickly.

6: Copy the “ntldr”, “ntdetect.com”, and “boot.ini” files from the root directory of your Windows boot drive (probably C:) to the A: drive. You might want to edit the boot.ini file if you had previously customized it for your normal Windows boot. Mine looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

7: Open the VM Settings window, click on “Floppy 1” in the “Hardware” tab
7: # Check “Connect at Power On”
7: # Click “OK”

8: Shutdown Windows in the VM and then power it back up. You should be greeted with the screen to select a hardware profile.

I was hoping that either ntldr or ntdetect.com would have some options for specifying a hardware profile to load, but I haven’t been able to find any information on that.
15.
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david on 08/10/2006

Scott, thank you very much for your help. It didn’t work, I’ve checked all permissions and they are fine, tried with root but it is the same, created a new vm but always the same. My conf is as follow: NTFS in 1st and 2nd partition, 3rd for swap and 4th for ubuntu. two hardware profile as you suggest; all settings on the vm are as you suggested (i’ve tried to include only one of the two partitions of winzoz, the c: one of course but it is always the same). Something strange has happened tough, I’ve tried to power on the vm with the same result and then i’ve tried to boot natively with the vmware hardware profile… blu screen ! with the default profile is working fine. Now I’ve canceled the vmware profile and created a new one. Will try again to boot the vm but without the option to wait for a hardware profile to choose. I’ve placed the virtual profile on top of the list and tell win to wait 15 seconds and boot with it. I’ll let you know. Thanks again, David
16.
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david on 08/10/2006

thanks to the help of ulli in vmware server forum , I’ve been able to boot up windows, but now it hangs with a blue screen…. to boot i had to create a floppy image and get rid of grub… Now I have posted my log to the vmware guys and hope someone can help. Reading your howto and the vmware docs, everything seems so easy…. but I will get to the end (and it will works of course :-o ). I agree with you : vmware is really a good piece of software !

thanks ,

david
17.
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jacekmw on 08/11/2006

Scott, Thank you for your helpful link. I have used this trick to boot windows from the HDD in the multibay some time ago. It gave me some idea though – I borrowed a HDD with WinXP on NTFS created VM and managed to boot it from the second HDD (got a blue screen later, don’t care about XP though). I have also tried the VM to boot from CD and log into windows using recovery console (failure- it didn’t find my windows installation). My conclusion is that my problem is not related to boot phase – my FAT32 partition is not recognized as such in a VM. I will try to search and post on vmware forums, conversion to ntfs is an (unconvenient) option.
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delfick on 08/11/2006

I have my windows partition on the C: most my programs on the D: my stuff on the E: and my games (many, big games) on my F: then after those partitons i have a partiton for my ubuntu dapper and the swap space thing….

If i follow the tutorial, will i be able to use my programs and games installed in windows? and if so at what speed?

thnx…
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sanbarrow.com on 08/14/2006

Instead of useing grub or lilo for booting the virtual XP I’d recommend creating a XP-floppy-boot-image. I have found that this is the most trouble-free way to do this.

Ulli (continuum in the vmware-forum)
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trefoil on 08/21/2006

Nice howto. It got me up and running with little problem. One comment: you say you can’t suspend the virtual Xp. You can. Maybe I have a more recent VMware server? But it seems you don’t need to. You can power off your virtual Xp in mid stream and when you power back on it is right where it was. I find this mind boggling. It is a real hard drive after all. I did it once by accident, once more to check that I wasn’t imagining things, but I’ll wait for someone smarter than me to tell me why it is safe before I try it again.
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Jim on 09/02/2006

Tom,

Did you get an answer to the product activation question?

I get a notice that I need to activate, but when I click “Yes” to activate, I get to a screen that says the OS is already activated.
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Jim on 09/02/2006

One more thing. I grabbed an XP boot floppy from:

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Grab xpquick.exe use unzip on it (ignore the errors), copy the file xpquick.IMA to bootdisk.img and it boots XP for me (installed on hda1). Grub on the floppy gave me a “geom error” and just the GRUB in the top left without the floppy. (The latter is something to do with the disk mappings, but since the XP boot floppy worked, I won’t figure out what).

Now, if I could just get past the activation… I really find it insulting that there is a suggestion that I’m dishonest making me have to jump through these hoops, but then I guess that’s why I normally run Linux.
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Jim on 09/03/2006

Ah! Went through the whole windows update (on the real partition), even got WGA’d (but not the notification piece hidden in one of the security updates). Now I’m logged in without activation problems.

However, I have to decrease the amount of memory, with 700MB allocated to the VM on a 1GB machine it swaps constantly. I’m concerned that when I change to 512MB I may be back into activation land.
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anon on 09/03/2006

This has been linked to on Digg, just to let you know.

http://www.digg.com/linux_unix/Run_your ... e_on_Linux
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Jim on 09/07/2006

decreasing the memory to 512MB, or installing the VMWare SVGA adapter put me back into Activation land. I have a working, activated install, with the VMWare mouse driver, but not the SVGA and it’s activated (I think…).
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Ioannis on 09/10/2006

Thank you very much for your instructions. I followed them and everything went well, but Windows in VMWare is extremely slow to startup, log in (approx 5 min), log out, shut down and to open any windows related application (control panel, etc.). The applications themselves work relatively ok. The weird thing is before I found your web page, I had a VM with its own installation of WinXP inside Ubuntu, and the speed was fine, slower than booting directly in WinXP, as expected, but not a lot slower. Any ideas why the physical partition in VMWare is a lot slower? Anything I could try to adjust? Thanks!
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Tom on 09/11/2006

Hi Jim,

I’m still working through Microsoft’s support on the product activation issues. I’ve got it escalated into the research group, but they are being pretty slow to respond. Just waiting patiently for now…
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Seb on 09/11/2006

I am about to attempt this setup tomorrow. Today I installed Windows and Ubuntu and setup the secondary hardware profile. I am a bit concerned about the Activation problems however as this is very definately a Retail version of XP Pro. Does this activation problem only occur when you swap between VM and Physical? SO if you use it mainly in VM and only physical for when something goes wrong, it shouldn’t cause too many problems? Also, how does this compare performance-wise to a standard XP on Linux VM setup?
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Mark on 09/11/2006

I’ve had a functional dual boot setup for some time now and have attempted to get a running VM working. Unfortunatly when I try to load the VM for a WinXP home partition I get a “GRUB loading please wait… Error 21”. I’m using xp on sda1 and Ubuntu on sdb3. Both of course are SATA drives. I tried to tag more than one partition when setting up the new VM, but the current version of Server will only allow me to choose 1 partition. What to do?
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Feldegast on 09/12/2006

I have tried to follow the steps in this guide. From what i can see the “Prepare Windows” step needs to be elaborated, how do i remove components from 1 profile and leave them in the other?

also i am getting the STOP: 0×0000007B error (which means the IDE driver is wrong), everything i have seen says i need to install the relevent driver, how do i do this? i looked at all the KB articles mentioned and none mention how, short of an in place re-install of xp.
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bronson on 09/12/2006

Feldegast, as far as I know, you can’t remove software from only a single profile. Leave it installed if either profile requires it. And, as for the 0×7B issue, did you see Tom’s message above about setting “scsi0.present” to “FALSE”?
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Feldegast on 09/14/2006

unfortunatly setting “scsi0.present” to “FALSE” won’t work as SATA is being used for the hard drive
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Jim on 09/14/2006

Mark,

There are a couple of posts about using altnerate boot disks (including mine). Might work for you also.

Jim
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Mark on 09/14/2006

Thanks Jim… I did read about that but haven’t had the time to try to implement it…

Instead of using a floppy is it possible to setup a secondary stage 2 grub on the HD using a slightly augmented name that will still work. I resist having a floppy in the machine all the time.
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bronson on 09/14/2006

Mark, it’s not a physical floppy. It’s just a file on your HD that VMWare uses as virtual floppy disk. But, you’re right, it’s plugged into the VM all the time. If that’s a problem, you can just add another virutal floppy drive to the VM. :)

I didn’t expect so much good information to end up in the comments! In the next few days I think I’ll try moving it to a wiki so people can put it into the article directly.
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Ioannis on 09/15/2006

Feldegast,

I run into the same “STOP: 0×0000007B error” problem and setting scsi0.present to FALSE did not work either. What did work for me was I went into the configuration text file of the VM (the *.vmx I think it is) and changed it so that the disk settings were for an IDE disk rather than a SCSI disk (to know what settings I had to change I created an additional temporary VM with a virtual IDE disk and checked the differences). This allowed me to boot into WinXP and install the VMWare Tools. After that was done, I shut down the VM and re-edited the vmx file back to using a SCSI disk. When I re-started the VM it worked fine. I do have the problem I posted 4 days ago, but I believe it’s not related to the disk because the configuration is back to the original one. Hope this helps!
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Feldegast on 09/16/2006

Ioannis thanks :) your method worked a treat, i now have my Windows XP64 running as a virtual machine

one note: when changing settings from SCSI to IDE delete/comment out the BIOS metrics for the hard drive (should be the same as the physical) once all is working simply delete the VM settings to boot the physical XP install and create a new one (unless you want to undo all the changes you made manualy)
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Feldegast on 09/16/2006

that wasn’t too clear…lets try again. one note: when changing settings from SCSI to IDE delete/comment out the BIOS metrics for the hard drive physical characteristics (ddb.geometry.bios*) as they are not used for IDE. Once all is working as a standard IDE drive and you have booted into Windows XP sucessfully, create a virtual disk (and select SCSI) or connect another physical hard drive to install the VMWare SCSI driver then reboot, once all of that is working you can either undo all the changes you made to the VM setup to restore your system to using SCSI drivers for your boot drive OR you can delete the VM (not the physical drives) and then create a new VM for your Physical Windows XP install now that the drivers are installed in the VMware profile
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Jonathan on 09/16/2006

Tom, any updates?

I have tried opening a thread on Microsoft’s newsgroup:

http://forums.microsoft.com/Genuine/Sho ... &SiteID=25

However the responses have been ridiculous. I can’t call support service because I have an e-academy license which doesn’t give me free-of-charge support.

Please, keep us up to date with your results.

Thank you.
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Jim on 09/18/2006

Johathan,

I like the quote of the EULA and then the complete disregard of the quote. IANAL, but since it seems to say ONE INSTALL and we’ve all made ONE INSTALL, it’s not clear to me why they keep quoting the EULA. However, I suppose that we should watch for that clause to change retro-actvitively, that is, they’ll provide a security update with a EULA that prohibits what’s going on here.

I’d like to get the VMWare SVGA driver running because it’s significantly faster.

Tom all hope rests with you!!!

Jim
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Feldegast on 09/19/2006

WRT Product activation, the only solution that i can see is installing from a corporate version(?) of XP using a Volume Licence Key (i think you need to buy 5 licenses to get one of these copies though). the plus side is there is no activation in this version of XP, I don’t think it is available in XP Home. Also if you get Windows XP64 Pro (Home not available) there is no Windows Genuine Advantage either (well at least not yet).
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Feldegast on 09/21/2006

VMWare SVGAII installed here, though i have the 64bit driver, downloaded from the VMWare website
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Lucianolev on 09/21/2006

Hey! Thanks for the info, but it isn’t working here. :( The STOP: 0×0000007B blue screen error is still showing up, although i followed every workaround posted here. However, the last workaround (editing the vmx file and changing to ide device) give me an error saying: “Device ide0:0 is configured as the virtual disk file ”/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines/WinXPReal/WinXPReal.vmdk”. This virtual disk was created as a SCSI disk with SCSI geometries. It cannot be used as an IDE disk.”

I had take a look to the vmx file but there isn’t any geometry bios stuff to change… :( I have installed Winxp on sda1 and Gentoo on sda5.

Any ideas??

Thanks in advance, Luciano.
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Feldegast on 09/21/2006

Lucianolev, i got the same error,
(adendum to above post)
i used Ioannis’ sugestion…. In a new seperate VM, i created a virtual IDE hard drive and compaired it’s configuration file with the physical SCSI’s configuration file, below are my current files (i unfortunatly no longer have my intermediate versions) they are to show what needs to be changed to make vmware think the drive is IDE
—-—-—-Windows XP Professional.vmx-—-——-
scsi0.present = “TRUE”
scsi0.virtualDev = “lsilogic”
scsi0:0.present = “TRUE”
scsi0:0.fileName = “Windows XP Professional.vmdk”
scsi0:0.writeThrough = “TRUE”
scsi0:0.deviceType = “rawDisk”
—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—

needs to be changed to an IDE drive look at the config of the virtual hard disk to see what needs changing, it needs to stay as a raw disk however…and

—-—-—-Windows XP Professional.vmdk-—-—-
ddb.adapterType = “lsilogic”
ddb.geometry.biosSectors = “63”
ddb.geometry.biosHeads = “255”
ddb.geometry.biosCylinders = “24321”
—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—

needs to loose the bios lines and lsilogic needs to change to …i think “ide”.... (look in the settings file for the ide virtual hard drive to be sure)
i hope this helps.
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Lucianolev on 09/21/2006

Thanks a lot, that works! Now I have to figure out how to make my mouse and keyboard work on windows xp in vmware :P

Bye. :)
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Lucianolev on 09/21/2006

I set “Autodetect” in vmware server mouse options and now keyboard and mouse work like a charm!

Thank again, everything is fine. I also manage to create a boot floppy disk to boot directly into windows by following this: http://www.vmware.com/community/thread. ... 2574#42574

Goodbye, Luciano.
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Mark on 09/22/2006

Hello,

You’re tutorial seems great. One question. You say:

Select 2 partitions: the Windows partition (of course), and your regular boot partition so that VMWare can access your bootloader’s second and third stages.

Umm, Can I assume that the boot partition is the one where I installed Linux? For context: this is a PC which was preinstalled onto the C: drive. I shrank the the first partition to 40 gig for XP, added a nice big Fat32 partition in the middle and 39G/1G ext3/swap partitions at the end.

Thanx any info.

Mark
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Mark on 09/22/2006

Hello,

You’re tutorial seems great. One question. You say:

Select 2 partitions: the Windows partition (of course), and your regular boot partition so that VMWare can access your bootloader’s second and third stages.

Umm, Can I assume that the boot partition is the one where I installed Linux? For context: this is a PC which was preinstalled onto the C: drive. I shrank the the first partition to 40 gig for XP, added a nice big Fat32 partition in the middle and 39G/1G ext3/swap partitions at the end.

Thanx any info.

Mark
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Feldegast on 09/22/2006

Mark the boot partition is / unless you have created a /boot partition
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Tom on 09/22/2006

Still waiting on Microsoft to respond on the product activation crud. The last time they called they stated “Microsoft will not support VMware running on Linux”. When I told the support person that VMware and Linux are completely irrelevant to the problem (problem is that product activation hinders the use of multiple hardware profiles) and that if they don’t believe that, then they aren’t understanding the problem. The individual said he would speak to his “mentor” about it and get back to me. That was over a week ago.

I think the only way that Microsoft is going to do something about this is if many people call and complain about it. So, everyone, call and tell Microsoft this is a problem. I do not have free support, and Microsoft has not charged me for support on this issue. So, I’ll quote myself from an earlier post:

“I highly encourage anyone else who runs into this to open your own case with Microsoft. Their support number is 1-800-936-5700. Tell them that your computer is consistently requiring you to re-activate it. This support number takes you to Microsoft’s fee-based support, however, take the time to very politely explain the problem in detail and you won’t be required to pay a support fee. Make sure they understand that the problem is with Windows product activation only – and not a problem with VMware. Make sure they know that Windows is operating perfectly when booted natively and when booted within VMware – except for the product re-activation requirement.”

I’ve had a very hard time explaining the concept of a single install of Windows booted both natively and in VMware to the support people. I don’t think the support folks I’m talking to really get it. So, be patient and friendly, but firm. If they try and close the case without resolution, tell them that they have not provided you with a satisfactory solution and insist that they escalate the issue. They will likely keep telling you over and over how product activation is intended to work and why it is doing what it is doing. Tell them that you understand that, but that product activation is designed to prevent illegitimate use of Windows, that you are running Windows in a legal manner, and that product activation is hindering your legal use of Windows. Let them know that you feel this is a defect in the design of product activation.
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Feldegast on 09/23/2006

Has anyone got a way to automatically select the VM hardware profile at bootup (possibly by using a virtual floppy boot disk)?
A little more information (step by step) would be appreciated as i havn’t managed to get the virtual floppy to work as yet.
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Ben on 09/23/2006

Any updates on the activation issues? I have an OEM version of XP Home and am unable to activate or even use it for three days.
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Feldegast on 09/23/2006

Ben, nothing that i have seen….
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Toobuntu on 09/23/2006

Win2k does not use product activation and is very similar to WinXP. Getting MS to provide WPA workarounds for virtual machines is what’s needed, but, until they do, using Win2k may be a useful alternative for some people.
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PimPaulOgy on 09/26/2006

I don’t get past the grub boot menu. I lauch the vmware image of my existing XP, get the boot menu, select Windows XP, then it just sits on the screen that has the chainloader screen. It never starts loading XP. Any ideas?
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Peter on 09/27/2006

Anyone got it working on a Dell Latitude D820?

I keep getting the STOP 0000000007B stuff…

Tried Everything. It is probably due to the SATA drive…
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Peter on 09/27/2006

Anyone got it working on a Dell Latitude D820?

I keep getting the STOP 0000000007B stuff…

Tried Everything. It is probably due to the SATA drive…
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Feldegast on 09/27/2006

Peter that’s a 7B did you try what i did to get it working?....tell vmware your hard drive is IDE not SCSI, then install vmware tools then change it back….explained in more detail above
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Feldegast on 09/27/2006

PimPaulOgy, does your pc boot xp as a normal dual boot?
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Eddie on 09/27/2006

I think I’ve found a way to avoid re-activating everytime you switch between the two instances.

After extensive googling, I came across these instructions: http://www.theeldergeek.com/activation_workaround.htm, which basically tell you how to avoid re-activating when you are simply re-installing windows on the same machine (i.e. which already has an activated copy of XP) – by copying the wpa.dll and wpa.bak files.

I’m sure people are already familar with the fact that when you boot into a (physical) windows inside VMWare, it detects that the hardware has changed, and a warning pops up saying you are given 3 days to reactivate.

And normally, after doing this, the next time you physically boot back into Windows (outside of VMWare) you are required to re-activate immediately. Not any more…

The secret here is to backup the wpa.dll/wpa.bak files when using Windows physically (i.e. without VMWare), once it has been activated. Then once you’ve succesfully booted and logged into VMWare, clicking yes to the 3 day prompt, copy the wpa.dll/wpa.bak files back. Next time you boot Windows outside of VMWare, you are not required to re-activate, as you would do before.

And I suppose if you’re really keen, you can maybe write a batch file which is run on startup, which copies the wpa.dll/wpa.bak files over, to automate this.

Can some people please try this and confirm? (It’s worked once for me so far…!)

Eddie
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Peter on 09/28/2006

Feldegast,

Yes I did, Here is what my files look like:

This is the vmx file =========== #!/usr/bin/vmware config.version = “8” virtualHW.version = “4” scsi0.present = “FALSE” memsize = “512” ide0:0.present = “TRUE” ide0:0.fileName = “WindowsXP.vmdk” ide0:0.writeThrough = “TRUE” ide0:0.deviceType = “rawDisk” ide1:0.present = “TRUE” ide1:0.fileName = ”/dev/scd0” ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-raw” floppy0.startConnected = “TRUE” floppy0.fileName = ”/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines/WindowsXP/floppy_boot_xp.img” Ethernet0.present = “TRUE” displayName = “WindowsXP” guestOS = “winxppro” priority.grabbed = “normal” priority.ungrabbed = “normal” powerType.powerOff = “hard” powerType.powerOn = “hard” powerType.suspend = “hard” powerType.reset = “hard”

floppy0.fileType = “file”

ide0:0.redo = ”” ethernet0.addressType = “generated” uuid.location = “56 4d f2 ac 92 9b 7b 01-52 a1 b7 df ed c5 04 cc” uuid.bios = “56 4d f2 ac 92 9b 7b 01-52 a1 b7 df ed c5 04 cc” ethernet0.generatedAddress = “00:0c:29:c5:04:cc” ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = “0”
This is the vmdk file ============ Disk DescriptorFile version=1 CID=8d6ec356 parentCID=ffffffff createType=”partitionedDevice” Extent description RW 63 FLAT “WindowsXP-pt.vmdk” 0 RW 73706157 FLAT ”/dev/sda” 63 RW 20466810 ZERO RW 61577145 ZERO RW 530145 ZERO RW 21168 ZERO The Disk Data Base #DDB

ddb.adapterType = “ide” ddb.geometry.sectors = “63” ddb.geometry.heads = “255” ddb.geometry.cylinders = “9729” ddb.virtualHWVersion = “4”

Thanks for your help.
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Peter on 09/28/2006

SORRY for the previous post here we goes:

Feldegast,

Yes I did, Here is what my files look like:

This is the vmx file =========== #!/usr/bin/vmware

config.version = “8”

virtualHW.version = “4”

scsi0.present = “FALSE”

memsize = “512”

ide0:0.present = “TRUE”

ide0:0.fileName = “WindowsXP.vmdk”

ide0:0.writeThrough = “TRUE”

ide0:0.deviceType = “rawDisk”

ide1:0.present = “TRUE”

ide1:0.fileName = ”/dev/scd0”

ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-raw”

floppy0.startConnected = “TRUE”

floppy0.fileName = ”/var/lib/vmware/Virtual

Machines/WindowsXP/floppy_boot_xp.img”

Ethernet0.present = “TRUE”

displayName = “WindowsXP”

guestOS = “winxppro”

priority.grabbed = “normal”

priority.ungrabbed = “normal”

powerType.powerOff = “hard”

powerType.powerOn = “hard”

powerType.suspend = “hard”

powerType.reset = “hard”

floppy0.fileType = “file”

ide0:0.redo = ””

ethernet0.addressType = “generated”

uuid.location = “56 4d f2 ac 92 9b 7b 01-52 a1 b7 df ed c5 04 cc”

uuid.bios = “56 4d f2 ac 92 9b 7b 01-52 a1 b7 df ed c5 04 cc”

ethernet0.generatedAddress = “00:0c:29:c5:04:cc”

ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = “0”
This is the vmdk file ============ Disk DescriptorFile

version=1

CID=8d6ec356

parentCID=ffffffff

createType=”partitionedDevice”
Extent description

RW 63 FLAT “WindowsXP-pt.vmdk” 0

RW 73706157 FLAT ”/dev/sda” 63

RW 20466810 ZERO

RW 61577145 ZERO

RW 530145 ZERO

RW 21168 ZERO
The Disk Data Base

#DDB

ddb.adapterType = “ide”

ddb.geometry.sectors = “63”

ddb.geometry.heads = “255”

ddb.geometry.cylinders = “9729”

ddb.virtualHWVersion = “4”

Thanks for your help.
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rjjb on 09/29/2006

“avoid re-activating when you are simply re-installing windows on the same machine (i.e. which already has an activated copy of XP) – by copying the wpa.dll and wpa.bak files.” – Eddie

Awesome.. thanks. This was mentioned to me a while ago but it wasn’t relevant for anything and I forgot about it. When I get windows reactivated tomorrow (grr..! arg..!) I’ll try this out and definitely script the recovery.
You meant wpa.dbl (not .dll) though, I assume.. **

Just thought I’d throw that out there in case people start looking for a wpa.dll instead of reading the link.

Much thanks for the tip, Jeremy.
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jn on 09/30/2006

Hi there Thanks for a really useful article. I was having trouble getting VMware to boot XP on my dual-boot system; this helped a lot. I still haven’t got sound going but that’s OK for now.

I followed Tom’s instructions for creating a bootdisk image as I couldn’t work out yours; my ‘mount’ command required a -t filesystem parameter on my Gentoo system and my first guesses didn’t work.

Looking forward to your article on using Samba to mount my Linux partition so that XP has access to it under XP. Thanks again, Jon N
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jn on 09/30/2006

Hi there Thanks for a really useful article. I was having trouble getting VMware to boot XP on my dual-boot system; this helped a lot.

I followed Tom’s instructions for creating a bootdisk image as I couldn’t work out yours; my ‘mount’ command required a -t filesystem parameter on my Gentoo system and my first guesses didn’t work.

I still haven't got sound going but that's OK for now. nor networking ... more reading coming soon!

Looking forward to your article on using Samba to mount my Linux partition so that XP has access to it under XP. Thanks again, Jon N
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Feldegast on 09/30/2006

Peter, i can’t see anything wrong, the only thing i can sugest is removing any drives other than the hard disk and floppy drive as they shouldn’t be needed to boot the system to windows.

also do you have any unusual devices installed? ones not available within vmware? they might be causing a conflict.

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hkoster1
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#5 Post by hkoster1 »

Looks interesting, and scary too. Thanks for sharing.
Real Debian users don't do chat...

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#6 Post by caleb »

wow... I knew there was a way... this'll have to wait until I have some downtime...

Thanks for the post!

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