VMware Player

[HoppaLong]

Years ago I used an app that mounted a "virtual" drive letter

or partition. It listed itself as an additional optical drive in

My Computer. That's my one and only experience with virtual

software.

I'd like to try VMware Player so I can create a virtual copy of

XP Pro. If I wanted to access this virtual XP from the Recovery

Console or another boot disk would it be possible? There is

something I need to try which requires copying some freshly

installed system files. The limited command prompt that runs

from within Windows cannot touch any file that is in use. If

VMware creates a virtual partition would it be accessible outside

of the Windows environment, like a "real" partition would be?

[DigeratiPrime]

For virtual optical drive software I reccomend Slysoft Virtual CloneDrive

http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

The only way you can access the system inside a vmware guest is to mount its vmdk file as a mapped drive, this will not be accessible from the hosts Advanced Boot Options menu.

[jaclaz]

Could you expand on your requirements?

I am not sure to have understood what you need to do.

A virtual hard disk image can be mounted outside the Virtual Machine (but usually NOT when the VM is running and viceversa).

Instead of VMplayer (which .vmdk hard disk images can be mounted through VDK.EXE by Ken Kato or with the VMmount utilities by VMware) you may want to try using Qemu, which is a bit slower than VMware, but uses RAW disk images, i.e. byte-by-byte copies of an actual hard disk, that can be mounted with a number of Virtual Disk drivers.

Particularly, I seem to remember that an image mounted with IMDISK can be booted with Qemu 0.9.x in a kind of "non-persistent mode", I could see if I can reproduce the setup if this is what you need.

jaclaz

[HoppaLong]

Thank you jaclaz and DigeratiPrime.

I think the answer I was looking for is no, a virtual partition cannot be

accessed outside of the Windows environment.

When apps like Unlocker or CopyLock came along I was very skeptical,

to say the least! These apps forcefully kill system processes so you

copy, move, or delete files that are normally locked. I've seen people

crash their systems almost beyond repair with these dangerous apps.

The only safe way to access locked or system files is from a DOS boot

disk or the Recovery Console which emulates a DOS like environment.

Obviously, if you're not comfortable at the command line you can do

a lot of damage. If you're careful, you can replace or copy damaged

system files easily, since all of these command line utilities run before

Windows starts.

Before I thought about virtual software, I was going to use an old desktop

that I've kept for no reason I can think of. It has 98SE installed. I was

going to backup the system, delete the partitions and install XP for a couple

of hours just so I could copy a few freshly installed system files.

Since a virtual copy of XP won't help me, I'll use this old desktop to get

the files I need.

[DigeratiPrime]

If you have the rights to kill a process, you can probably instead release its handle on the object you want using a tool like Process Explorer

[uid0]

I think the answer I was looking for is no, a virtual partition cannot be

accessed outside of the Windows environment.

Yes it can - Jaclaz has already listed some tools you can use to do this.

But if you just need some clean xp system files, you might be able to use expand.exe and get them straight from your install media instead.