Hiya,
I've seen a few questions similar to what I'm wanting to know, but no responses that quite answer it.
In short, is it possible to have a VMware product (workstation or player) as a pre-installed item on a live CD (in this case, an XP CD)?
I'd like to be able to boot from a Live XP CD (one that I've pre-tweaked and installed drivers for, etc. using BartPE and/or nLite), and then be able to open a VMware image (stored on a physical drive, probably a USB drive).
The reason for this is that I'm also a gamer, and doing things this way would allow me to have an incorruptible XP host, which can directly drive my video card, to play games I've installed onto a physical drive, and also be able to access my "main" OS, kept as a VM (a safe place for all my apps and documents, that I can occasionally make a backup of in case of disaster).
If it'll work, it's the ultimate "safe" setup, and I'd never have to re-install Windows again apart from doing an occasional backup and wasting a disc or two. Antivirus wouldn't be needed at all (outside the VM, of course), and a firwewall could be installed that's been sandboxed, so any writing that it needs to do is done in a folder on the external drive.
I'm seriously liking this idea. But, it all comes down to whether a VM can be loaded from a Live CD.
And yeah, before ya say it, I'm aware that I can just do a basic XP install on the drive to achieve the same results, but the idea here is to kill two birds with one crate of dynamite, and not just retain the ability to play games, but also attain the security of knowing the host OS will never get corrupted or need to be reinstalled. Now \*that's* worth the price of admission. 
Opinions? Comments? Soggy produce projectiles?
Message was edited by:
RDPetruska
Removed emoticon from subject line
Yeah, I'm not planning on running both at the same time. No reason to have the VM up and running if I'm busy blasting away bad guys.
I checked out that site, as well as some related forums on the 911CD forums, but it's hard to tell what people are actually talking about. The Sanbarrow site sounds like it's talking about Linux, not Windows (but I can't be sure, of course), and I can't view the file area, to see if the downloads are for Windows or something else, without making an account first.
I did see a link he posted on a forum for a beta version of a VMW version 4 (point something) plugin, but that's no good, and no sign of a current version plugin. From the sound of things, it is feasible, it just hasn't been made or openly released by anyone.
Darn, this is just one of those days where I keep saying the wrong thing. No, I wasn't referring to finding a pre-built CD, I was talking about finding a VMW plugin for use in making one myself.
As I said above, there is an older version available, but it's not compatible with current software versions, and from what the page said, it was a beta plug that still needed testing. I read some of his forum posts about it (others are asking the same questions I am), and got the impression the older plugin worked alright. An update, aimed at XP SP2 and current VMW versions, is ultimately what I'm hoping to find.
I looked at the thread someone mentioned above (from elsewhere on this site), and he does appear to be testing something, but it's for Win2003. No clue if that would work with XP.
