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Ubuntu running Windows in VMware Player

I managed to destroy my Windows XP partition a few weeks ago while trying to resize it. Fortunately I made a backup. I decided to try to run Windows inside a virtual machine. After removing the broken NTFS partition, I reused the free space to create a new /home partition.

I created a disk image with QEMU, and ran a Windows XP installation on it through VMware Player. And I must say, it works perfectly. I am even able to connect to USB devices such as a PocketPC.

In the picture below I am debugging a Compact .NET Hello World application in Visual Studio in Windows in VMware. The application is running on the PDA that is attached to the PC.

Debugging a PDA with Windows running in VMware on Ubuntu

Here is a screenshot of Visual Studio running the PocketPC emulator:

The Visual Studio PocketPC emulator in VMware Player

Speed is not an issue: the image runs almost at native speed thanks to the kernel modules. Whenever I need Windows (I rarely do), I just fire up VMware Player, and I am able to dig right in because it saved the previous state. And when I’m finished I just suspend the virtual machine.

I don’t think I’ll go back to a dual-boot system soon.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

View Comments to “Ubuntu running Windows in VMware Player”

  1. Manuel Says:
    May 5th, 2008 at 10:24 pm

    Hi there,

    What version of Visual Studio are you running?
    I'm trying to use the windows mobile 2005 emulator in a windows XP virtual machine but no luck so far.

  2. Jo Vermeulen Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 3:21 am

    I used Visual Studio 2005 with the Windows Mobile 5.0 emulator as well, so that should work. Make sure that you mount /proc/bus/usb first. There is a thread at the Ubuntu forums that describes how you can do that.

    I am currently using VirtualBox. The binary version (not the open source one) has support for USB pass-through as well.

  3. Manuel Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 7:58 am

    Thanks for the heads up. I actually have no issues with USB–using Mandriva 2007.1 here. It's just the emulator that won't start. I'll install VS 2005 and see where I go from there.

    Regards,

    Manuel

  4. Jo Vermeulen Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 8:41 am

    You're welcome, good luck!

  5. Manuel Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 11:58 am

    Thanks for the heads up. I actually have no issues with USB–using Mandriva 2007.1 here. It's just the emulator that won't start. I'll install VS 2005 and see where I go from there.

    Regards,

    Manuel

  6. Jo Vermeulen Says:
    May 6th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    You're welcome, good luck!

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