[clue-tech] Windows 7 recommendation

[marcus hall]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 07:28:54AM -0600, David "Barahon" Willson wrote:
> I don't think that's viable. As far as I know, it's not possible to
> boot the same instance of Windows from the metal and virtual
> hardware, interchangeably.
> 

That's demonstratably possible with windows 2000 at least..  I'm doing that
at work right now (haven't had time to try to figure out getting to exchange
calendering and print services given how the IT department has things set
up..)  This is using VirtualBox.  I gave up on VmWare when I got tired of
trying to hunt down changes to VmWare kernel modules every time I upgraded
the kernel and re-building their modules broke.

I have windows set up with two different profiles, one reflects the raw
hardware and the other the emulated hardware.  Had an issue getting the
driver installed and enabled for the emulated hardware (given that it was
already installed with the driver for the raw hardware).  Other than that,
it hasn't been much of a problem.  I haven't installed the client extensions,
since I don't know what impact that might have on the native execution.
Probably should give it a try, but for the few things that I have to use
the windows for, it's OK.

VirtualBox supports a "shared folder" ability that seems to work well.  On
the host you specify a directory to share, on the guest you can access it
as a windows share (on windows) or a mountable filesystem (on linux).  Then
you can access the directory from either OS on the fly.  I would recomend
this rather than setting up a partition that you can mount on one or the
other OS, and trying to ensure that it is mounted on only one at a time.

-- 
marcus hall
marcus at tuells.org