Solved: Virtual Preinstalled Vista in Linux? I am buying a new laptop for college soon. It (unfortunately) comes with Windows XP (Media Center 2005 or Pro) or Windows Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium, or Ultimate) preinstalled. I would like to make a dual boot machine using Ubuntu as my primary OS. I would also like to use several Windows-only programs. It would be nice if instead of rebooting to Windows every time I needed something I could just open a virtual machine in Ubuntu and have it boot my Vista (possibly XP) installation. Is this possible? Could I wipe the hard drive when I get it and use the recovery disks to do a virtual installation once I get Ubuntu running? Or should I just suck it up and reboot when I need to use Windows?
Suggestions on VM software (preferably free, but doesn't have to be) and other techniques are welcome. Thank you for your time. |