virtualbox.org

I'm sure this question has been answered somewhere before, but I can't seem to find an answer.

I'm running a machine that dual boots Ubuntu on one disk, and Win 7 on another. On the Ubuntu side I have installed VirtualBox, and created a WinXP VM. I need this VM literally just for one application that doesn't run on linux and crashes in wine. I'd also like for my program data for this app to stay current on both the native Win 7 installation, and the VM Win XP installation. My thought process was to do something like this:
- On the WinXP VM, create a new shared folder pointing to the programdata directory on the Win 7 drive.
- Within the WinXP VM, create a new symlink in "C:\Docuements and settings\user\my documents\appname" that points to that shared folder drive.

Unfortunately, symlink's don't really exist in Win XP. I've tried installing "Junction", which is the old workaround for symlinks in XP, but it requires that the source be on an NTFS device, and VirtualBox shared folders show up as their own file system.

Anyone have any ideas how to get around this problem? I know I could also run the "Windows 7 in both VM and native" tutorial, but I'm paranoid that I'll kill my old and very heavily used Win 7 partition.

The basic problem is that your Windows 7 OS is not running when XP is. What you want to do is modify one of Win 7's files when the Win 7 OS itself is not running. That is not easy. It is not simply a file sharing exercise. It would be simple if XP was running as a vm under Win 7! You could then access a file in Windows 7 from XP using Microsoft file sharing.

You probably need to copy the data to a file on a physical drive on the host (not within the XP virtual disk) so that Windows 7 can access it when it boots. You could work out some way to sync it on startup.

I'm not sure I understand why Win 7 not running is a problem. I edit files on my Win 7 drive while booted into Ubuntu all the time. Win 7 isn't running when I do that.

Basically I need the WinXP VM to be able to edit files on the Win 7 drive, and need to trick WinXP into thinking they are in a specific place on it's own drive.

Sure, editing files on a physical drive is OK from an OS running on the host. That is quite different from an OS running in a vm. An OS running directly on the hardware has access to the physical drives - an OS running in a vm has access to its virtual drive only.

You would need to find a solution like "junction" which works with network drives.
Otherwise, if you really know what you are doing, you could try setting up raw disk access for the Windows 7 partition.