Windows 7: Anyone tried Vboot from VMLite?

It sounds like it will let you boot into a Windows XP VHD. So first you downloaded and install XM mode, which will give you the XP Pro in a VHD. Then install VBoot?

Sounds interesting?

I have tried.

1. Trying to boot from existing vhd

Following the instructions carefully, I am able to prepare all Windows vhd's to be used with VBoot and add them to VBoot start menu. All Windows vhd's boot OK, until Windows boot screen, and then (without an exception) a BSOD causes PC to reboot back to square 1.

Tested Windows vhd's: XP Pro SP2, XP Pro SP3, Vista Ultimate x86, Vista Ultimate x64, Seven Ultimate x86, Seven Enterprise x86

All mentioned vhd's tested on one laptop (see my specs) and two desktops, one running Seven Ultimate x64 and the other Seven Enterprise x64.

Trying to mount other than Windows vhd's have not worked at all. Here trying to mount Ubuntu 10.04 vhd. VBoot tries to mount the vhd:



Until it finally fails, telling that the vhd is write protected (which it is not):



This happens with all tested Linux and Solaris Unix vhd's.

2. Trying to create a vhd and install OS using VBoot

Every installation seems to work, this is what I normally got:



But after testing, only Windows 7 Enterprise guest vhd was able to boot, which it did completely problem free. Installation of Seven using VBoot command line options took about 15 minutes, plus an additional 7 minutes after first boot to vhd.

All other tries failed, Linux and Windows. The most common reason to fail:



So, after an 8 hour test session, I would like to say this is a pretty useless piece of software.

Kari

Over 3 weeks after release, more than 10,000 people have used it and are happy.

If you want to boot existing vhds, you need to do v2p conversion. In addition to run "vbootctl prepare", you need to inject mass storage drivers. If you want to boot windows from a virtual disk stored on USB, you need to insert more USB drivers. Our forum has many discussions.

VBoot main purpose is to boot fresh virtual disks installed from iso files, i.e., you need to follow our instructions to install a fresh windows xp/2003/7/2008 from original os cd, then it will surely boot on the physical machine.

For ubuntu Linux, you need to change initrd.

If you mount Linux Vhd on windows, it won't work since there is no Linux file systems, such as ext3.

In short, vboot works extremely well, no one comes even close, and it boots all windows from a virtual disk file, in vhd/vmdk/vdi, and it supports snapshots and differencing files.

Don't take my words, go to read others feedbacks in vmlite forums.

Can I ask what the purpose of this is? Is it simply to take a virtual hard drive file and boot the machine from this file just like a dual boot? That's what I am thinking. While I have needs for running VM's, I don't really have a need for a dual boot style setup.

(1) one feedback: VBoot Stop Error Within VMWare - VMLite

(2) USB boot: Boot virtual disk from USB - VMLite

(3) live host snapshoting: Do you like to snapshot your live host system? - VMLite

multi boot is one use.

VBoot will give you the same control to your host machine as you do on virtual machines. For example, you can take snapshots and keep your machine clean.

Many situations, vms are slow, and people may want to run them as real machine. VBoot provides you the capability to run the same disk file as virtual and as real interchangeably.

Also, this will simply IT management by distributing a file to real machines. VBoot also provides a feature called "immutable boot", where all system changes will be discarded after reboot. This is ideal in public computers, e.g., universities. A few universities are already in talk with us to deploy vboot.

There are many other use cases, e.g., to distribute a readonly Linux vhds, to boot a readonly Windows PE for admin use, etc.

another use, VBoot will allow you for the first time to install Windows from iso files, instead of using a physical cdrom.

for example, you do these two steps to install Windows XP to a real hard disk from iso file:

menuentry "XP Install Step 1" {
vboot floppy=(hd0,1)/vboot/vboot.img cdrom=(hd0,1)/winxp-sp3.iso boot=cdrom
}

menuentry "XP Install Step 2" {
vboot cdrom=(hd0,1)/winxp-sp2.iso boot=harddisk
}

More instructions:

VBoot Instructions

You are the VLite Developer? I had a friend try and since he has VBox installed it wouldn't even install. Is this program just a copy of VBox?

As mentioned in our site, vmlite workstation is based on vbox ose, you need to remove vbox before installing vmlite workstation, or install vmlite plugin for vbox.

Vboot is very different from vbox or vmlite workstation, as it is not a virtual machine, only thing same is the disk format.

Does VBox know this?