How to switch betwen OS on Dualboot Fedora and Vista without reboot

[physicsRocks]

Hi folks,

I have installed the Fedora on my laptop with Vista installed first. Now I am using the OS separately fine. I just choose which Os to boot in to every time I turn the machine on. However, I now need to do certain task that I need to switch between two OS. Wonder how to switch to Vista when I am using Fedora without rebooting? and vice versa.
Is there a step by step tutorial to do so?

Thanks

[parish]

As far as I know, the only way this is possible is to run one of the OS's inside an emulator like vmware. I used to do this to run xp inside of fedora.

Daniel

[mpeters]

As the previous post says, you need to run one of the OS'es in a virtual machine within the other OS.

Try VMWare, http://www.vmware.com/, or (better in IMO) Virtual Box http://www.virtualbox.org/.

Virtual Box should be available via Add/Remove Software.

[physicsRocks]

Hi, I have downloaded virtualbox and setup a VM. However, since I have installed Fedora before the virtual box, when I start virtualbox to boot the Fedora that defined during the setup of VIrtualbox, it does not recognize my Fedora. It claims no bootable medium found.

Namely, VirtualBox does not recognize my Fedora OS that I installed as Dual Boot before.

Not sure what may I do now?
Thanks

[physicsRocks]

What may I do? Thanks

[yanjchan]

I'm not sure if you can boot the Fedora that you installed as a dual boot in VirtualBox. Your best bet would be to reinstall Fedora in a Virtual Box Hard Drive, but you should wait for someone else's answer before trusting mine.

[markdk]

Yes, you need to install or migrate your fedora system into a virtualbox virtual disk image. Virtualbox should not be able to boot of a physical partition, only from a virtual disk assigned to a VM.
I'm not saying it can't do it, I'm sure some VMs can although its not good practise. A VM should remain isolated from its host environment.

As you have probably already downloaded the viirtualbox manual as well, I had a quick look through it and the manual shows it can actually access raw hard disk spaces if you want to create a customised vmdk virtual disk; or even allows the really insane although not without a little effort to access the entire physical disk, it also points out you are most likely to corrupt your physical hard disk, so if you get to that point in the VirtualBox manual as that seems to be where you are heading please STOP.

I would recomend that the easiest way forward for you as you have already installed VirtualBox is to create a new VM with an empty disk and install a copy of Fedora into it. Then install the virtualbox additions to make the VM appear almost as if another windows application. Thats all detailed in the virtualbox manual you have downloaded.