Running my dual booted 7 as virtualmachine

**Greshapa** · April 18th, 2011

Hi, i'm relatively new to Linux, i have been using it on my work laptop for a few months now and want to move it over to my desktop.

However, my desktop has windows 7 with alot on it, tons of stuff installed over years and i really dont want to have to reinstall everything.

I'm wondering if i can boot up my current windows 7 thats already installed as a virtual machine.

Sorry if its hard to understand what im asking, im kind of a newb to things like this.

Thanks!

**r0llingthund** · April 18th, 2011

Of what I understand no there is not a way that you can take your windows 7 OS and make it into a virtual machine that you can run inside of Ubuntu (or any Linux distro for that matter)

Though, not to be rude or too personal but why would you need windows 7 anymore. But as you said you are new to this and I'll be blunt (even with Ubuntu being one of the easier distros to understand and use) there is a learning curve when coming from a PC (or a Mac). BUT once you understand how Linux works, even if just a little bit, you will understand that anything that you can do in windows you can do in Linux.

I hope I answered your question.

**earthpigg** · April 18th, 2011

i'd be very doubtful.

essentially, you will be asking a windows 7 installation to continue to function when every peace of hardware has been changed from under it all at once.

i don't even think windows generally functions if you move the hard drive to a new machine, and this would be adding an additional layer of complexity on top of that.

**Greshapa** · April 18th, 2011

Yeah, i know but my family uses the computer as well occasionally and they would not appreciate it if i got rid of all their stuff, among other small reasons that stack up.

Thanks for the reply though, i think for now ill just stick with 7

**suduntu** · April 18th, 2011

moulding your windows7 into a virtual box perhaps not going to work out.
but you can go for a dual boot system for your desktop provided you have got enough partitions and or free space available.

**Mark Phelps** · April 18th, 2011

Originally Posted by suduntu

moulding your windows7 into a virtual box perhaps not going to work out.
but you can go for a dual boot system for your desktop provided you have got enough partitions and or free space available.

This doesn't solve the OP's problem because they still will NOT be able to migrate an existing Win7 installation to another machine. Doesn't matter whether they try to do it with a dual-boot or with a virtual partition.