[CentOS] XEN virtualization of a Windows installation

Mon Aug 9 21:06:36 UTC 2010
James Hogarth <james.hogarth at gmail.com>

On 9 August 2010 20:19, Boris Epstein <borepstein at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks . I saw those docs and many more, but for some reason could not find
> the scenario I am interested in.
> Thanks.
> Boris.


Okay re-reading your specific point I think I misread it at first. My
initlal reading was that you wanted to take a dual boot windows/linux
system then take that direct windows instance and bring it under xen -
effectively a sort of physical to virtual but on the same system...
That is *feasible* on an appropriate system with some care and
probably a windows recovery console...

But if you are asking how to take a dual boot system and have that
windows instance available to Xen but still also dual boot capable....
well again with a windows recovery console to aid the switch
potentially possible (XP/vista/7/2003/2008?) but due to HAL
differences (and potentially activation depending on version as well)
then it most likely won't work (easily)... so finding a guide for that
is unlikely... and from memory you'll mostly find posts with dead ends
of how it fails for windows.... however if you are determined to try
you *might* find some success depending on windows version to have
multiple hardware profiles and that *might* work.... It will, however,
be potentially very fragile.

TL;DR: Maybe possible with some careful choosing of hardware (both
real and virtual) whilst being careful to never mount the same
partitions on the disk at the same time and with some hacking of
windows for hardware, drivers, etc and dependant on windows version
with regards to how it will behave for activation with changing
hardware...

James