[Wylug-discuss] Running Windows with VirtualBox

[John]

On Fri, Feb 03, 2012 at 02:39:25PM +0000, Smylers wrote:
> A J Cole writes:
> 
> > Smylers,
> > 
> > > Hello. I've bought a new laptop, to run Ubuntu on. It'll come with
> > > Windows 7 on it, and it might be nice to be able to run Windows 7 in
> > > VirtualBox.
> > > 
> > > Any guidance for how to do this? Or more specifically, for anything
> > > I should do to snaffle the Windows image from the computer before
> > > splatting Linux all over it?
> > 
> > OEM licenses are hardware specific and (most/all?) won't run when
> > virtualised.  You need a retail or volume licensed copy of Windows.
> 
> Thanks. Wow, I hadn't considered that -- I was naïvely thinking that
> buying a computer plus Windows would give me the right to do that.

I think you have that right.  But suppose you haven't got every last
dotted 'i' and crossed 't' of that right.  So what?  MS are not going to
sue you, for (apart from finding out) they'd have to show (financial)
detriment.  Note it would be that way around - they would have to prove
detriment, rather than you proving lack of it.  I can't see that MS
would even try, for it's a lost cause.  (Not to mention a Pyrrhic
victory at theoretical best.  Imagine the magazines covering it!)

On a more practical issue, as has been posted, Windows hates its
foundations (hardware/drivers/etc) changing underneath it, so you may
struggle to get your OEM-configured version into VB and running.  The
kinds of things to do would be to remove its special screen etc drivers
and then in essence reinstall generic ones that VB (or VM) can simulate.

When I wanted to do something vaguely like the above, I started by
connecting an extra hdd and used dd to copy across all the OEM stuff, so
that in the worst case I could fully reinstall it and have another try.
I expect the Ghost way is as good or better but dd is easy.

John