On Mon, 2013-03-11 at 12:25 -0600, Warren Block wrote: > Booting the same Windows install alternately in a VM and then on real > hardware may trigger the "Genuine Advantage" annoyance.
This is true, but for some exceptional cases perhaps untrue. I wasn't aware about this possibility, but it does sound interesting to me. I run Windows in VBox only to use an iPad I won and to transfer documents from my *nix to the iPad. So my exceptional cases is, that I've got something useful I didn't buy myself. This thing, the iPad, has a lot of disadvantages, I don't pay for apps etc., but it's useful as a reader and for some other tasks. I don't need and I don't use Windows, with this exception (to use the "reader"/iPad). It's a XP without admin account and service pack 2 only, I don't give a damn about the state of this Windows or the state of the "reader". Ok, I made some snapshots, I use this advantage, but I could live without snapshots. I'm a *nix only user, the iPad and regarding to this, Windows XP too, fall into my lap. iPad and Windows aren't important for me, I don't need the security advantages of the virtual machine. I chose it, to avoid issues with installing Windows to a real partition, no primary was free and fixing the boot loader is work and I wish to access iTunes from my *nix ... however, since *nix tend to be problematic regarding to hardware, it can't harm to have a Windows to test hardware that does cause issues with *nix, to ensure that the hardware isn't broken. In my very exceptional, individual case it might be really interesting to share a "real" Windows install, directly booted and booted as guest in VBox. I'm thinking of making a backup of the virtual partition and to restore it on a real, primary ntfs partition or something similar, perhaps I can copy just the iTunes data and make a new Windows install ... OTOH I didn't use a Windows install before, disk space isn't expensive, so I'm uncertain, if I really want a real Windows install and if I should wish to have one, it's not to share it with VBox, but keep a separated version in VBox. I'm not sure that it's really easy to test hardware when booting it directly and to have completely different _virtual_ hardware by VBox. What would happen, if for the _virtual_ boot of XP, the professional audio card is missing? The setups might be that different, that it perhaps can't switch between a _real_ and a _virtual_ boot without much editing. _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
