Virtulization on native OS possible?

[lakersforce]

Is there any virtulization programs/devices out there that can virtulize a native OS system?

For example, I have Windows Xp and Ubuntu installed on my harddrive as a dualboot. I want to be able to start Windows up from within Ubuntu. But at the same time I of course also want to be able to boot the same Windows up natively.

[ilrudie]

I'm not entirely sure this is a good idea because WIndows gets upset over drastic hardware changes because it thinks it has been pirated. When I moved a parallels vm with Windows XP to a VMware vm XP locked down and I had to call MS tech support and explain to them that I was switching to a new virtualization product to get them to give me a code that would unlock it. It was quite a hassle. You might run into this every time you switch from running nativly to running in a vm as well. Not sure. I'd be interested to see if there are good solutions for this though. Good luck in your search.

[bodhi.zazen]

Yes it is possible. I do not run Windows, but you can easily boot your physical partition with a virtual machine (VMWare, VirtualBox, KVM, or Qemu).

There are how-to for both vista and windows XP in the Virtualization mega thread.

Please check the stickies, there is a reason they are stickies.