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I have a VMWare virtual machine running Windows as a guest which I want to convert to a physical partition. The idea is to add it to the GRUB boot menu, and be able to boot it.

Is this possible? If so, how?

EDIT: I tried using Acronis True Image to duplicate the VM (a Windows 7 guest) to a partition on the second HD, and add this partition to the GRUB boot menu. When I tried to boot it, it failed with complaints about hardware/software modification which requires using the Windows DVD to restore/repair the installation. I'm afraid this won't work. Ideas?

Hennes
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Moshe
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3 Answers3

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If your VM Disk is big enough, you could Run a program like Norton Ghost or Acronis true image within the VM, copy the image to an external hard drive, and restore the image onto a physical partition.

2

VMWare has documentation on it here, but it's a guide using 3rd party tools and it isn't technically supported.

Simon P Stevens
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Of course you can use tools like Norton Ghost, but if you installed VMware Tools you might need to uninstall it before you run your OS on a physical machine.

If you run Windows Vista I doubt there will be any problems. Vista is very resistant to big hardware changes. Apart from a disk geometry change, but that's handled by Ghost. I haven't done anything like that with XP though.

KovBal
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