[sf-lug] linux running windows as a VM

[Ken Shaffer]

My Lenovo W520 allows for setting a preference on the boot mechanism, UEFI
before legacy etc. This makes it easy to have different boot mechanisms on
different disks -- select the one you want it and boots the way it is set
up. There's a W10 in legacy mode on the original HDD (Win 7 upgrade), and
Ubuntu in UEFI mode on an SDD in the CD-ROM slot. Also on the HDD is a
legacy Ubuntu.  Selecting legacy Windows from the UEFI grub boot (I did put
all the UEFI bootloaders in the EFI in case I convert the HDD to UEFI)
fails of course (the disk is MSDOS partitioned), but the legacy Ubuntu
boots (and vice versa, booting the UEFI Ubuntu on the SDD from the legacy
grub on the HDD.
  I had set up a KVM Win10 boot from an ISO, and never activated it, but do
get updates.   The gotcha on a VM might be if you need proprietary video
hardware (for games?). The later Nvidia drivers supposedly allow dedicating
a video card to a VM, but my machine is too old for that.
Ken

On Sun, Feb 13, 2022 at 8:48 AM Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com> wrote:

> Alex Kleider writes:
> > What I'd like to do is install Debian (which I've done many times  on
> other computers) and then have windows available as a WM should I ever want
> it. (I've never before had occasion to want it but I've already paid for it
> so why not have it available just in case?!?)
> > As I understand it, one can make an "image" (a single file?) of the
> (windows) OS (and store it on removable media) while running windows as
> currently installed and then later feed that image to a virtual machine
> running under Linux (Debian in my case) after Linux is installed (and
> windows blown away in the process.)
>
> When I set up my current machine a couple of years ago, what I did was:
>
> - Remove the original internal SSD and replace it with a brand-new
>   larger one. Now I had a backup of the original Windows in case
>   something went horribly wrong.
>
> - Install Linux on the new disk
>
> - Copy the Microsoft Data Management (MSDM) from the BIOS into a
>   VirtualBox VM: see https://superuser.com/a/1329935
>   Now that VM thinks it's running on the original machine, at least
>   for purposes of authorizing the Windows install.
>
> - Download the official Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft and install it
>   in the VM
>
> Of course, you could do this with kvm/qemu instead of Virtualbox.
> I used Virtualbox because the instructions I found for using the
> MSDM in Virtualbox were a lot clearer than the ones I found for
> kvm/qemu. Some day maybe I'll get around to figuring out how to
> convert the virtualbox image to kvm with the right MSDM.
>
> I never used Lenovo's preinstalled Windows 10. I kept the internal
> SSD around for a while just in case, but eventually, when I needed
> some fast external disk space, I put it in an external enclosure and
> overwrote it. During the time I kept it, the only time I considered
> swapping it back in was the ordeal where Lenovo released a firmware
> upgrade that was only available as a Windows EXE; but I eventually
> found a (horribly complicated) way to make a USB-bootable Windows to
> Go image that could run the EXE.
>
>         ...Akkana
>
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