Just a quick question... What performance can i expect for a decent cpu and 1.2 GB of ram? if debug mode is turned off or whatever and if everything is working... is it a huge resource drain on your computer?
Just a quick question... What performance can i expect for a decent cpu and 1.2 GB of ram? if debug mode is turned off or whatever and if everything is working... is it a huge resource drain on your computer?
Yep, I found out the re-registering the hard way myself. Until a week ago I used Windows 2000 which doesn't need this activation thing and it's easy to switch between "dedicated boot" (mainly used for gaming) and VMware boot. (Some doesn't-work-on-Linux for-my-work-things)
Windows XP however is needs activation which is sticked to a hardware profile. If you change the hardware too much, you have to register again. (Guess what happens if you change your CPU from Pentium to Core 2 Duo ....)
VMware shows virtual hardware rather than the real hardware en blows your activation. As result: you have to activate again every time you switch between VMware and dedicated boot.
Activation seems to be limited to something like 20 times, so this is not a good option.
Solution:
- Make a choice whether to boot dedicated or under VMware.
- Spend lots of money on a cooperate or volume XP Licence which does't need activation.
- Stick to Windows 2000.
Anyone got an idea how to solve this activation and hardware problem? (Please: no "download this crack from xxx-rated.com...!)
Running more safely
In my view, there is a security issue using VMware under Linux together with real hard disk instead of image file.
to be able to access the raw device, you need to be a member of the disk group. Without, you, VMware, cannot access the raw device.
Actually, that's not what you want. A normal user should NOT be a member of the disk group. Also; running VMware as root is also NOT a good idea. The issue can be solved easily however:
- Create a new user and new group. I used both vmware
- Create a home directory for the user, you do need it
- Give the user a fake shell: /bin/false
- Don't give the user a password or simply disable it. (paaswd -d)
- The new user should be a member of primary group vmware en secondary groups disk (tha does the trick!) and audio (in case you want to use your soundcard)
- I use gksu --user vmware -l to start vmware. vmware will run as user vmware.
Worked perfect! I now have Windows XP fully up and operational
I ran a second terminal window incase i needed to install anything. I had to install the C header files ( sudo apt-get install build-essentials ) and download the linux header files. And all the default values were what I wanted. Now I'm going to install other linux distros and try em out! The possibilities are limitless!
Btw, having XP in a nice "cage" on my desktop is a great feeling
Thanks for the tutorial!
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I ubuntu, therefore I am.
I don't have this currently installed, but have you tried the menus. I remember that I got it from there.
BTW you are using VMWare server as instructed in this HOWTO, right? Or are you using VMWare Player for Linux? 'cos if it's the player, then I don't think it has VMWare tools. The server installation does have it.
Don't know if this has been mentioned so far in the thread, sorry if it has but I don't have time to go all the way through
A cool thing to do with running XP in vmware on linux is to enable remote desktop, SSH in remotely using putty to your linux box and tunnel port 3389 to the IP of XP in vmware. Then just connect rdesktop to localhost:3389 and it runs superbly quick even on modest hardware. You also dont get the keyboard/mouse grabbing weirdness of using the vmware server console to contend with.
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