This might sound daft, but something similar used to work with live discs.

I’ve got Windows 10 and Mint 21.1 dual booting on my computer at the moment. Every so often I’ll realise that I’ve missed something from my Windows installation. If it’s important, I then have to boot to Windows to get the information, or the settings etc.

Is there a way to virtualise my Mint installation so that I can run both the OSs at once to make sure that I’ve got everything?

VirtualBox had a tool to do this with a live USB, but that was back in the MBR days, so it probably won’t work with modern hardware.

EDIT: Sorry, I should clarify, Mint and Windows are on the same physical disk, and the plan is to remove Windows once I’m done.

Update: I’m giving up. It looks like it is possible if you have separate disks with separate boot partitions, but getting it to work with a shared boot partition is harder work than I’m willing to do right now.

VMware Player can use a partition or disk, but might be in read only mode, I couldn’t get far enough to check.

Thanks for all the replies :)

  • @NarrativeBear
    2•22 days ago

    I run a Hackintosh’s dual booting Mac OS and Windows. So you solution is not insane as some have pointed out.

    What I would suggest is maybe running a NAS on your local network to act as your share. Obviously this won’t help if you dont store your working files on your NAS, but its an idea. I know no way to directly share between the two machines as they are technically not on at the same time.

    • TipponOPEnglish
      1•22 days ago

      Thanks, but the sharing itself isn’t the issue. I’ve got three other hard drives in this computer, and can access them all through each OS. What I want to be able to do is be using Windows and realise that I want something from a program on the Mint drive, or have Mint running and realise that I need something from a program on Windows, and just be able to get it without having to shut down everything and reboot.

      I’ve got programs like Thunderbird where the data has to be exported before it can be imported in the Mint version, and the program has to be running for that to happen. With my memory, I keep forgetting about things like that until I’m in Mint and need the data, but in the time it takes me to reboot, get the data, and get back to Mint, I’ve forgotten why I needed it in the first place >.<

      • @NarrativeBear
        2•22 days ago

        No worries, VMware or some of the other virtualization software’s should work in this case as most other comments pointed out. Probably the most simple and straight to the point.

        If you have the urge to tinker, another potential item or route you can look at is a proxmox machine. You can run multiple VMs in tandem at the same time. This would run on a standalone machine.

        You would then be able to remote desktop into any virtualized OS on your home network. You can use a software like parsec which I like to access each machine from a clean interface.

        • TipponOPEnglish
          1•21 days ago

          Thanks for the suggestions, but you might be misunderstanding me. I’ve already got Windows 10 and Mint installed on the same drive, and I was hoping to find a way to boot the existing Mint installation as a VM under Windows.

          There were Windows programs that could do something similar in the past, using VirtualBox, but it looks like the Linux distro needs to be on its own drive with its own boot partition for it to work.