Virtualize a vista partition

[jtfalkenstein]

So I've read few forum threads that are similar, but I can't find an answer to my situation.

Here's what I want to do:

I want to partition my HDD into 3 partitions

Partition 1 (default boot part.): Ubuntu 8.04

2: Vista

3: A partition both can read and write to (Fat32, maybe?)

I want to have the option of dual-booting (so I can get 100% performance when I want to use games and whatnot), but I want to also be able to virtualize that partition for everyday use (iTunes, etc). Lastly, I want to have the third partition be my central storage for both so, if I have to wipe the vista partition for any reason, I won't wipe my music and whatnot.

I know this is technically possible; I used mol on my ibook G4 a while back to be in 6.06 and use my Tiger partition.

Resources shouldn't be a prob. I'm planning on running a Phenom x3 2.3 with 4GB Ram--that should handle a virtualized vista for everyday use.

How would I do this? I've looked into the VMWare converter... but I don't want to convert it. I want my vista partition to stay intact so I can boot into it when I need full resources.

[latna]

Well, since nobody's answered yet I'll give my experience with trying to do the same thing with XP and vmware.

I once found a tutorial on how to do this and got windows to boot with vmware. Sorry I can't remember where I found it. The problem that I had was with activation. The hardware that vmware emulates is different from the hardware that's actually in my computer. So windows asked me to activate again. Then it asked me to activate once again when I booted straight into windows.

I've read that you can create a second hardware profile for the virtualized windows. I've also read that you can only activate XP a certain number of times. I didn't want to go over this limit, so I just gave up.

Maybe someone will expand on this and confirm that it will work with the second profile. Or maybe it's different with vista, I don't know. I just thought I'd give you something to think about.

[Paradoxfox93]

I want to do the same thing with Vista. I don't really care if I can boot back into vista or not. As far as I'm concerned I'd not like to touch vista but i cant get Gyachi for Feisty and i cant seem to get the emulators (SNES) working either. SO until then i have to jump back over to ******* every time. I'd really like to virtualize it with VMwar but i'm totally clueless about how to use VMWare and not sure where to start but this is exactly what i'd like to do. No one with any experience?