Re: dual boot Win XP on a USB-connected hard-drive

On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:53:39 -0400, Hactar wrote:

In article <75j1r8F18aco5U6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, General Schvantzkoph
<schvantzkoph@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:23:57 +0000, Bob Tennent wrote:

I need to use Windows to access an iPod Touch. I have Windows XP on a
hard-drive in an external USB-connectable enclosure (and Fedora 10 on
the internal hard-drive). I want to be able to boot to the external
hard-drive (when it's connected of course). Can grub be configured to
do this? I find the grub documentation rather impenetrable.

Bob T.

Install VMware Server 2.01 on your system and then install an XP VM on
that.

Tried it in VMware Player. iTunes wouldn't recognize the device. So I
chunked out 10G primary and a 5G secondary partitions (the latter is for
programs) and it works with XP.

VMware Server handles USB devices very well.

Didn't try that.

Dual boots are a last
century solution, VMs are a much better way to go.

So-rry.

With a VM you can run your Windows programs while running Linux.

Yes, assuming you have enough RAM. The laptop only has 2GiB, which
makes for a rather tight Windows "machine".

With your IPOD you would just keep it connected to the XP VM all of the
time.

I almost hacked it in the VM, but each time it disconnected /
reconnected VMware popped up a dialog to announce its presence, so I
would have to dismiss the box, navigate through the menu and connect the
device. Apparently I took longer than the program's timeout.

I've been able to run VMware Server on 2G machines just fine, I set my
W2K or XP VM to 512M which is enough assuming that you aren't using them
for any sort of heavy duty work. I only use Windows for Quickbooks and MS
Office and to download an old Garmin GPS (which I've done using the USB
connection on VMware), so a 512M Windows machine is more than adequate.
That said you'll be much happier if you max out the RAM in any machine
that you are using for VMs. In modern desktops that use DDR2 that means
8G (which can be had for about $90) and modern laptops that means 4G. In
the last generation DDR machines its 4G and 2G respectively.
.

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