Can you dual boot in VM?

This might sound like a crazy idea to some of you, but I would like to be able to dual boot in a VM. The reason for this is to be able to play around with different dual/multi boot options (and testing removal of dual booting) without the risk of trashing the Windows PC I just got from work (IT will only support Windows even though all our work is in production on Red Hat servers - IT supports the developer machines but they only know about Windows, Ops supports the production machines but they only know about Linux.)

So, I tried this out. I created a new Windows VM. I added a second virtual hard drive, and initialized in Windows using the Disk Manager. I inserted the Fedora Core 4 DVD and rebooted. The install appeared to go fine, then came the reboot required after installation was complete. And the VM booted into Windows without giving the grub bootloader options for choosing OS.

It seems the MBR on the windows disk wasn't modified during the Linux install. On rebooting from the Fedora Core DVD and going through the upgrade path, it said it couldn't find a bootloader.

Has anyone tried and succeeded with this? Is this just not an option? Or should I try again and make sure I haven't made any mistakes?

 

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So if you bang your head against the wall enough times you may be able to set it up where you can select the VM you boot into.

Or, you could install another instance of Parallels and be able to select the VM you boot into.
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I already have Win XP, Debian and Fedora VMs, where I do "real" work (although it's not quite at the stage where I would trust my livelihood on it).

What I want to do is what I said in the first paragraph - use another VM as a test bed for playing around with multiboot configurations without any risk to the PC I'm going to be working on, and without having to go to IT and confess I screwed up their nice standard Windows setup and please can they reimage it.

 

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I understand what you want to do, I just don't understand why you want to do it.

Virtual machines negate the need for multi booting. This is reason I don't understand the why.
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No they don't. There's often a need for dual booting, and I have a need.

The Windows PC I have to use has a pre-virtualization CPU, and Linux in VMWare on that PC is much slower on it than Linux in Parallels on my iMac, and that's not all due to the iMac being a faster machine, rather the built-in virtualization support.

Before I used Parallels, I might have been able to live with it (WMWare is, after all much much better than VPC), but now it kills me to see it compiling my code at a snail's pace compared to Linux running natively. I spend 90% of my time (that's not spent using the iMac) using Linux, but our IT won't support my putting only Linux on a PC they provide.

So, I'm going to make it dual boot, spend most of my time using Linux, and boot into Windows only to run Windows update. But I don't want to screw up the install, and want to map out a way of backing out my changes. So I want to practice, but it appears I can't unless I hear any differently.

Is that clearer?

 

Just a thought, but a second virtual drive may not be the way to go. If you made a larger 'primary' drive and partitioned it to hold Fedora you might have a better chance. You'ld be dealing with the same boot sector that Fedora may not be able to see during installion when it's on another drive. I've tried to use a 'primary' from one vm as a 'secondary' for another vm and it doesn't work for some reason. There's something behind the sceens that identifies them as being attached, and how bootable. Using one drive may be the only way you can get away with sharing between them to.

 

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Paul,

Good news. It is possible to partition a virtual drive and install Linux and Windwoes to dual boot. I was interested in the posibility and gave it a crack. I installed on a SuSE 10 host, with SuSE 10 and Windblows as guests.

Note: I tried using 3 dos based patition tools, all of which got just moments into startup and crashed. Ended up using the partition tool in the SuSE install. Because of that I installed Linux first and Windohs second. Windwoes cans the MBR(that was expected) and places an entry for itself only. A quick bootloader repair from the SuSE install disk fixed the problem.
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Glad to know that not all of my ideas are loony....