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On Saturday 19 Dec 2015 23:19:56 Julian Hall wrote: > > 1. I would /like/ not to have to reinstall everything, and I have read > there is a way to run VirtualBox on an existing partition, however I > can't get my head around the various websites' instructions. Could > someone please give me idiot-proof advice on that? Not done this, sorry. I'd be surprised if it were easy. > 2. If I /do/ have to bite the bullet and reinstall Windows in a VM how > will activation work? Particularly for Windows XP. Almost certainly violated your license agreement with Microsoft, and XP will likely think it is a completely different PC. There are ways and means. Windows XP is not supported any more by Microsoft, do I even want to ask why you still run it? > 3. Will Windows Update behave itself? Yes, well as much as it usually does. > As an aside a friend came over today who is running a Windows 7 VM, and > he has not as yet worked out how to get USB support. With my SatNav > updates being a critical requirement could someone also advise on that > issue please? You can assign USB ports to be managed by the VM, so I doubt this will be an issue for VirtualBox. Although I'm not sure how backward XP support for USB is, it is older than my son, but confident Windows 7 will work. > I did ask him if it would be possible to create a basic > Windows VM and then overwrite the installation from a backup but he > advised it makes a disc image not the regular folder structure so that > wouldn't work. Backing up and restoring Windows system files between different hardware implementations is deep voodoo, and off topic. It can be done, if you have to ask you probably don't want to go there, but Windows system admins do this sort of thing all the time. Windows XP and later have migration assistants for data and settings for this sort of thing, also off topic, but these would be my first choice because it'll avoid creating insanely subtle problems for later on.
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