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Raydude
Contributor
Contributor

Windows Vista (32) vmplayer boot of physical disk

Is it possible to boot a Vista physical hard drive in vmplayer?

I can't get Vista to recognize the disk (0x0000007B).

I've tried changing the vmdk to use ide, no go.

I've tried loading the vmware tools in Vista but they won't install because the VM isn't running.

Is there a way out of this Catch-22?

Thanks,

Brian

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Raydude
Contributor
Contributor

*bump*

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asatoran
Immortal
Immortal

Using a physical disk is not for the faint of heart. Doing it wrong can cause data corruption. Player is intended to run virtual machines, normally that other people have created. But to have a virtual machine use a physical disk, then virtual machine no longer becomes portable (unless you're going to give the user the drive.) So there are no direct instructions on how to use Player with a physical disk. I'm not saying it can't be done. It's just not something that most people should do.

You can try reading from page 222 of the Workstation users manual. But that doesn't tell you what entries to make in the VMX file, just what to do within the Workstation program. You'll have to figure it out yourself. You can take a look at member Continuum's website for a list of the commands in the VMX file.

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Raydude
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the reply.

I've done this before with windows XP. Which just worked. Apparently Windows Vista doesn't have "profiles" so it can't learn different hardwares like XP can.

There is a work around for XP to install the basic drivers for most types of disks but I haven't found anything similar for Vista.

The reason I want to do this is to run the same Vista install whether I run native or in a VM. It worked great with XP.

I just wish I knew how to install the VMware Drivers in Vista while its running native.

I read the manual as you suggested and it doesn't offer anything specific to solve this problem. I setup the VM in workstation but ran it in Player.

My boss runs Parallels on his mac at work and its kindof flaky when it comes to running XP on a different display. So I want to evaluate VMWare's Mac VM (forget the name) to see if it behaves better than parallels. I'm hoping to do this at work on my Mac, but wanted to try it at home with Player first.

I will be running XP at work, so that might help.

I'll give it a shot at any rate.

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asatoran
Immortal
Immortal

I've done this before with windows XP. Which just worked. Apparently Windows Vista doesn't have "profiles" so it can't learn different hardwares like XP can.

There is a work around for XP to install the basic drivers for most types of disks but I haven't found anything similar for Vista.

The reason I want to do this is to run the same Vista install whether I run native or in a VM. It worked great with XP.

Not possible anymore since as you've found out, Vista doesn't have hardware profiles anymore. You can only run Vista in virtual or physical. You can't switch back and fouth easily anymore.

My boss runs Parallels on his mac at work and its kindof flaky when it comes to running XP on a different display. So I want to evaluate VMWare's Mac VM (forget the name) to see if it behaves better than parallels. I'm hoping to do this at work on my Mac, but wanted to try it at home with Player first.

VMWare Fusion for Mac has a feature to use an existing physical installation of Windows XP or Vista (a.k.a. Boot Camp) in a virtual environment without the need for hardware profiles. This feature is only available in Fusion, not in Player. (Due to the fact that so many Mac owners have installed Windows in Boot Camp, so to allow them to use the existing Windows without having to purchase another copy for a virtual machine.) The feature only supports 32bit version of Windows XP and Vista (since that's the only versions that Apple supported in Boot Camp.) And applications that require reactivation after hardware changes (i.e.: MS Office 2007) have have to be reactivated.

Fusion is available as a trial. If you decide to purchase, you do not need to uninstall. Just enter you new license key.

Me personally, I don't use my Boot Camp partition in a virtual machine on my Macbook Pro. I use a Vista virtual machine of most of my work, I use my Boot Camp partition for running apps that need maximum performace, such as Photoshop. But I can also run Photoshop in a virtual machine for 95% of my work, and I also have the luxury of having multiple licenses for Windows and Photoshop. If I didn't have the licenses, I know I could live with Windows in just a virtual environment. YMMV.

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