Switch to another os without booting
August 22nd, 2013
my friend told me that i can switch to another os without booting
can i do that and how to do it
thanks in advance
Is your friend talking about OS virtualization by any chance?
If so, try out VirtualBox:
https://www.virtualbox.org/
Information on VirtualBox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox
Cheers, mate.
If your friend didn’t mean what Zedd. is talking about (a popular alternative is VMWare btw) then your friend is mistaken. You cannot do that.
Whenever you want to start an operating system, you have to boot it, there is no way around that. What you can do with a VM (virtual machine), however, is freeze (suspend) it while it’s running. For all intents and purposes, the VM machine is then powered down, i.e. there is nothing running anymore. This allows you to start your machine again (without booting) within seconds, because you can simply transfer the previous state from the HDD to RAM.
VMware Workstation does that I think!!
Saturnsid replied: VMware Workstation does that I think!!
How so?
No, Ghostshot is right.
The only way to change to a different OS without rebooting is to run in inside a virtual machine (you can even have a couple running at once if you have the ram to handle it).
VMware, but that means you’re basically running 2 OSes at once.
My way to do something ‘like’ that, is using VMWare to run a virtual machine. Then, using dexpot or something likewise, I put the virtual machine on a virtual desktop. So that when I want to, I can switch to the virtual machine using a simple keystroke, and switch back just as easy.
When needed this can even be done using multiple virtual machines and virtual desktops (If your PC specs are high enough ofcourse).
You don’t even need the overhead of the virt. desktop – all the virtual machine will minimise happily to the taskbar, just leave them runnign on the ‘bar.
All a virtual desktop does is hide them from the main display, but there’s a memory and processor overhead of the VD program.. it might be small, but virtual machine need all they can get!
But yes, whatever you do you will have the main OS and whatever virt’s you use running at the same time – you can’t exit from one OS on-the-fly into another fully and totally.
Yeah I know it’s not needed. But I just like the way it works. That’s why I stated, it’s my way of doing it.
It does make it nicer to look at and control, for sure!
and you know where you are – OS 1 on desktop 1, and so one.
Zedd. replied: Is your friend talking about OS virtualization by any chance?
If so, try out VirtualBox:
https://www.virtualbox.org/
Information on VirtualBox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox
Cheers, mate.
thanks for the links
virtualbox and wmware can be used with only one os installed, and we we cannot change to another os without booting first
does my conclusion right
Just to clarify again, the usual method is to use multi-booting wherein different OS’s are installed to different partitions and you get to choose which OS you want to boot in to. In this case, to switch from one OS to the other, you have to reboot.
In OS virtualization, the OS you boot in to and where the virtualization software is installed is called the host OS while the OS which is installed in the virtualization container is called the virtual machine or the guest OS. The guest OS runs atop the host OS as something more or less like an emulation. The guest OS is led to believe that it is running on an actual machine rather than with a software. You can have any number of virtual machines running on the host OS provided your hardware is capable of handling it. And you can easily switch between instances of virtual machines without rebooting.
Zedd. replied: Just to clarify again, the usual method is to use multi-booting wherein different OS's are installed to different partitions and you get to choose which OS you want to boot in to. In this case, to switch from one OS to the other, you have to reboot.
In OS virtualization, the OS you boot in to and where the virtualization software is installed is called the host OS while the OS which is installed in the virtualization container is called the virtual machine or the guest OS. The guest OS runs atop the host OS as something more or less like an emulation. The guest OS is led to believe that it is running on an actual machine rather than with a software. You can have any number of virtual machines running on the host OS provided your hardware is capable of handling it. And you can easily switch between instances of virtual machines without rebooting.
thanks for helping zedd