On Sunday 29 October 2000 19:58, you wrote: > <grin>...inside a box? I can certainly understand that VMware might > want to diddle with its own copy of W'98 that's not installed in > standard fashion. From Bill's comment it seems I've missed a chunk of > documentation. Ok, just to weigh in on this, b/c its monday and I don't want to work just yet ... VMWare can diddle with all sorts of different operating systems, Windoze included. It can read from an existing install or you can install the guest operating system into a special file that VMWare creates. The first step is to install and configure VMWare, which its sounds like you did just fine. The next is to configure the guest operating system. USE THE WIZARD!! Its a little confusing the first time through but a whole lot easier than trying to get it right yourself the first time. I know... There is an option for getting VMWare to look at an existing install of the guest operating system. Just point it at the right partition. If Lilo is installed in the MBR of that disk, you WILL get the lilo boot prompt! VMWare contains its own bios, a Phoenix bios if I am not mistaken, and this is what reads the boot device. To install Windows, either put a boot floppy in the A drive or change the bios settings to boot off of the CD. This will NOT affect the real bios for your box. Then be prepared to run one of the scariest commands on a running box.... format c:\ :) It took two of us a full minute to actually press the enter key :) We actually flipped back and forth between the install window and a few other windows just to make sure nothing was happening to any of our actual partitions :) Basically, what VMWare does is intercept all hardware level accesses and makes the guest operating system think its in control and really doing things. In reality, you can only give up half of your total memory, and if you have installed the guest operating system under VM, it lives in a special file and touches no other parts of the drives. It also means if you have VMWare running, you need to tell it to let go of the floppy or CD if you want to use them.
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