Virtualization of existing installation

"Yes, but it depends on the virtualisation software.

Typically, when you set the virtual hard disk location, it is possible to use the entire hard drive as the ""virtual"" hard drive.

However, if you are trying to do what I think you want to do, you will get the same problem as taking out a physical hard drive and sticking it in another physical machine - complete hardware mismatches.

As far as I know, there is no way to have a single copy of Windows that you can use as a main OS and then switch it to use virtually.... Technically you can if you generalise / sysprep the machine every time you want to shut it down, however in practice, this is not very practical at all."

"Ofcourse you can run both the OS's at same time.

Use ""Sun xvm Virtualbox"" as your virtual machine."