Booting "VM" from partion not Image

clade · 25 Oct 2010 at 10:04

At work if we get a problem we remote connect into the laptop and fix the problem. Obviously this wont work if the problem means they have no internet/windows fails to boot.

I failed on a google search but can you boot windows xp + in a window from a live cd? obviously this would have to boot from a partition rather than an image file that most virtual machines work from.

clade · 25 Oct 2010 at 10:34

Im having abit of trouble finding out how to mount the partition as bootable inside virtualbox but havent had time to fully research this.

Aslong as I can interact with the partion/windows asif I was sat infront of the machine I should be able to fix the problem and allow windows to boot correctly.

I have a feeling that this is a project that will never be finished due to limitations of hardware requirments, virtual box booting the machine and updating any driver requirments. But if it work would be able to save a lot of hastle talking users though options via the phone and or courier charges.

clade · 25 Oct 2010 at 10:49

LizardKing said:
Though it wont work if you use anything like safeboot.

This is a good point. Some of our directors have safeboot encyrpted laptops.

This is really going to be an uphill battle me thinks.

clade · 25 Oct 2010 at 12:48

SiriusB said:
Mounting an actual partition in VB is an utter ballache. I can't find the link now, but the steps involved were lengthy!

I don't know if VMWare handles it any better.

Aparently according to this link VMWare is better at handling this.

The link I found makes the process seem easy but have yet to test it.

http://www.sysprobs.com/access-physical-disk-virtualbox-desktop-virtualization-software

clade · 25 Oct 2010 at 14:10

Ill probally go ahead with a windows version as we dont support linux in our IT department.

I will try and streamline drivers/virtualbox with UBCD4Win distro.

clade · 26 Oct 2010 at 08:53

I did some quick research last night while waiting for a server restart and found afew things:

1)Safeboot comes with a plugin that you can intergrate into the bartpe version of UBCD4WIN
2)You can generate the offline password file from safeboot admin console so internet connection is not required to the master server (the hole point of this research)

Atmo its kind of annoying as I dont have time to start building any test examples just research the problem. all the articles Ive found are quite old aswell.

on the list of research is now how to intergrate virtualbox into UBCD4WIN and drivers for certain laptops. Also some fine tuneing will have to be done to the ubcd4win network connectivity so that it will require less talk though on the phone.

Perfect option would be for it to bootup request a wep key (also include the tool to show the wep keys stored on the windows dir) once internet connection is confirmed start a reverse vnc connection to a computer using a program i have previously created.

I think that ill recreate a thread with completed research over on ubcd4win/dedicated bartpe forum when I have time and post a link here for anyone intrested as I think its very dependent on bartpe.

Thanks for you help guys made me realise that it was not going to be as simple as I first thought especialy considering I forgot about the safeboot laptops

clade · 26 Oct 2010 at 10:37

have finished off the story on that thread now. Thanks for the reminder I forgot I created it lol