Creating a Windows 7 VM from a Physical Partition

[dsilver829]

Hi!

I have a workstation with Ubuntu and Windows 7 set up in dual-boot mode. I have recently installed VMware Workstation on the Ubuntu host and I would like to use the existing, physical Windows 7 installation as the VM.

This would allow me to use all my Windows applications and also give me the flexibility to run Windows on bare metal if I want, while still allowing the convenience of running Windows as a VM within Linux.

VMware published a guide to this, but it doesn't go past Windows Vista:

www.vmware.com/pdf/dualboot_tech_note.pdf

I've seen a couple of posts in the communities on this, but all dated from a few years ago. They seem to imply that doing this with Windows 7 is hard or maybe impossible.

My attempts have so far been unsuccessful. The VM shuts down almost immediately after booting.

Any idea on whether this is possible, how to do it, or how to debug my broken VM?

Thanks!

David

[Rahulverma20111]

Please provide the vmware.log file of the Win 7 virtual machine which is using the physical partition.

[dsilver829]

Thanks, Rahul! I've attached the vmware.log file.

One question off the top: when I create the VM, should I use both the Windows boot partition and the data partition? I've tried with the both and with just the data partition, and neither way seems to work.

Thanks!

David

[WoodyZ]

You might want to disable 3D Acceleration as the vmware.log says "The GPU driver on this host might cause issues with VMware products. If you experience problems, disable 3D support in the affected virtual machines." however I doubt that is the only issue, although it's a place to start.

[Rahulverma20111]

Make sure that the Disk/Partition which has Windows installed should not be mounted on the Linux Host. If it is, unmount it.

If that doesn't work, proceed below.

Few things which I noticed:

2013-02-01T06:41:37.159-08:00| vcpu-0| I120+ A fault has occurred causing a virtual CPU to enter the shutdown state. If this fault had occurred outside of a virtual machine, it would have caused the physical machine to restart. The shutdown state can be reached by incorrectly configuring the virtual machine, a bug in the guest operating system, or a problem in VMware Workstation.---------------------------------------

2013-02-01T06:41:39.612-08:00| vcpu-0| I120: CPU reset: hard (mode 2)

2013-02-01T06:41:39.612-08:00| vmx| I120: Stopping VCPU threads...

Disable any CPU power saving or throttling features like SpeedStep, CoolnQuiet, etc. You will find the settings to disable it in the BIOS. Some CPUs have applications which install on the OS. Remove/Disable those as well.

2013-02-01T06:41:15.049-08:00| vmx| I120+ You are using a SCSI physical disk. SCSI physical disk dual-boot performance is poor. The installed operating system might not boot correctly in the VM. However, SCSI physical disks operate normally if used exclusively within the VM.

Try using IDE disk type for the VM.

[continuum]

> Try using IDE disk type for the VM.

I dont agree. LSI-SAS is fine.
Make sure lsi-sas driver is enable in registry - you just need to set start to 0 in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lsi-sas

And yes - you need both partitions.

Running Win7 in a dualboot config usually works very easy - but you will run into activation problems - so think twice if you want to do it

[dsilver829]

Thanks for the observation! I turned off 3D graphics and you are right, it's not the only problem 🙂

The behavior is still the same, but hopefully that was one of the fixes I needed to make to get this working!

David

[dsilver829]

Thanks!

I set the registry keys as you suggested (there was actually an LIS-SAS key and an LSI-SAS2 key; I set them both).

Still seem to getting the same error.

I just noticed an error that flashes briefly, just after the VM fails - something like: "Failed to connect to device: '/dev/sr0'".

Does that provide any more clues?

[dsilver829]

Thank you for the tips!

1) I looked in the BIOS and didn't see any power throttling applications.

I am using an ASUS M4A785T-M motherboard. Does that help?

There is an option to unlock more cores on my AMD Phenom II processor. Should I do that?

2) My physical drive is a SATA, so I am confused about why VMware defaults it as a SCSI. In any case, I would be happy to make it an IDE drive. How do I do that?

I tried deleting the VM and creating from scratch, but when I get to the section on selecting a drive, it grays out the IDE option an only offers me SCSI. Can I change setting or dive into a settings file and adjust there?

[dsilver829]

PS - Thank you to everyone for your help! I really appreciate it.

[Rahulverma20111]

Did you try unmounting the partion from the Linux Host and test? We had seen few instances in which it works. If the file system in mounted on the the Linux host as well, then Workstation might be unable to get access to it.

[dsilver829]

Thanks for the suggestion.

I don't think the partition is mounted, but maybe you can help me debug.

I've attached the contents of /etc/mtab, and I don't see the Windows partition in here, and there's also nothing in /mnt/.

However, there is a weird line in /etc/mtab:

vmware-vmblock /run/vmblock-fuse fuse.vmware-vmblock rw,nosuid,nodev,default_permissions,allow_other 0 0

Do you know what this is? Can you tell if the Windows partition is mounted in some way I missed?

Thanks!

David