25 replies to this topic

[AdvMutant]

Hey... You might think I'm a bit crazy, but I prefer 'curious'. I really love messing with old OSes. I like old things in general - I enjoy exploring good 'ol Doom, Windows 3.1, or even DOS. Recently I got tired of VMs. It just doesn't have the same felling. I came up with a solution - botting my VHD files! I'm gonna make a 30GB VHD, and somehow add it to my bootloader.
I know it's possible with Windows 7 and Vista, but(honestly) both are crap. I'm sticking with XP, and I'm not gonna install them just to use their bootloader.

So... After googling the day out, I found that it might be possible with a thing called Portlock Leap Frog. It enables adding a VHD with Windows 7 to my bootloader. The problem with it is that every time I click 'boot manager', it asks me to download an ISO file. Every time it finishes, it gives an MD5 hush error or something. No idea why. So basically it won't work.

Is it possible to add a VHD boot with GRUB? How can I perform that task w/o installing any additional OSes?
Thanks.

Edited by AdvMutant, 26 October 2010 - 08:38 PM.

[dargueta]

By VHD I guess you mean installing a fake partition?

[AdvMutant]

Yes. VHD stands for Virtual Hard Drive, the ones you're using when creating virtual machines.

[dargueta]

Right, but note that some of these, like VirtualBox, don't use real bootable images.

[AdvMutant]

It's ok, I'm using Microsoft's VirtualPC 2007 as I like messing with Windows OSes the most.

[dargueta]

Are you sure it uses a raw disk format then? If not you're up the creek.

[AdvMutant]

What does "you're up the creek" mean? Sorry, I'm not English.
I know Vista and 7 support it, so it's possible.

[dargueta]

Ok, I'm really confused about what you want here; do you want to be able to boot from this disk?

As for the idiom: The full expression is "up the creek without a paddle." It means you're stuck where you don't want to be and have no way of getting out.

[AdvMutant]

lol
I want to be able to add another option to my bootloader. Instead of just footing automatically, I want to add an option called 'boot from VHD' which is at E:\volume.vhd.

[dargueta]

Ooh, that'll be fun. The thing is, a VM intercepts programs' requests for disk access and redirects them to a routine that reads from the VHD file, then passes the data back as if it came from the disk. You'll have to have your own partition for that, because otherwise the bootloader is going to have to have a file system driver (in this case NTFS) to be able to find the image and load it. But even then, you're going to have to have some sort of VM or abstraction interface that'll intercept disk IO requests.

[AdvMutant]

Sounds complicated. If I understand correctly, you say that it will look kinda like JavaOS?
That's bad. It's not what I'm looking for. If a VHD can't act like a HDD, I guess I'll have to stick with a HDD. Which leads me to my second plan - making my VM using a physical drive instead of a VHD file as it's primary HDD. I remember it's possible either with VirtualPC or VirtualBox, not sure which one. I'm gonna dig in both a bit, and report back.
-EDIT-
Cool! I can link an external hard drive to VirtualPC. A flash drive will work too. That just rang a bell - I can install OSes on flash drives! All I need now is to get one(I broke my 8GB and lost my 4GB. Yes, I'm bad at keeping stuff) and I'll be able to make my own portable OS. The problem with it is drivers. Do you guys know a way to fix it?

[dargueta]

Drivers? I've already done the OS on a flash drive thing and it worked perfectly fine for me. What do you mean by "fix it?"