Is this possible? Question about crossing(?) a dual boot

[RileyAWA]

Hi guys,

Apologies if this is a common question and is already answered but I had a quick look around the forums and could not find anything!

Okay, so I've recently installed Ubuntu in a dual boot situation so I can pick between XP or Ubuntu. Now, can I use Virtualbox - or any other software if not! - to open up my old XP partition and boot into that? or do I have to start all over again.

Is that possible??

Hope this is clear...!

[TerryE]

Hi and welcome to our forum. You might want to look at the Forum Posting Guide. This contains some useful tips on how to search for VBox knowledge and how to frame Qs. If you do this you will find loads of posts on dual boot.

The short answer is that it is doable but somewhat convolved because MS deliberately don't facilitate this. You need multiple profiles and need to address the windows activation issues. Forgive me for not going into details but I have answered this Q dozens of times.

[Sasquatch]

More details can be found in the sticky in the Windows Guests forum.