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What I mean is that I want to be able to install Windows, Ubuntu 15 and Arch Linux on the same VM in a multi-boot like setup. How might I do that?

When I create a new VM in VMWare, I am asked to give it the type of OS I will be running? I selected Linux (but did not install it, left the disk empty) and tried installing Windows but Windows setup was unable to read the disk.

I did not try it the other way round yet because I feel I am doing something wrong? How might I achieve what I want? There is almost no documentation for this.

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    The virtualization software really isn't made for this usecase, but thats no reason why it shouldn't work. Just make sure you are using differant virtual drives for each OS instance (by adding additional vdisks), which should alleviate teh difficulty you had with the windows installer. Dec 2, 2015 at 21:33
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    @FrankThomas A virtual disk can be setup just like a physical disk. In particular, one can boot in a hypervisor a live distro and use it to build a a disk partition table (msdos/GPT) , to create a number of partitions, and to setup distinct filesystems on each of them. Then one can boot an installation image, and proceed to install as many OSes as one wishes. No need of separate virtual drives. Dec 3, 2015 at 14:23
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    This should just have worked. The only reason I can think of why it would not have worked is if you selected a emulated SCSI drive (which I think is the default for Linux) and you did not explicitly load the driver for that during windows setup.
    – Hennes
    Jul 6, 2016 at 10:30
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    @Hennes You beat me to it by a few seconds :-) Configure the VM for Windows. Linux can cope with that. The other way around.. Not so much.
    – Tonny
    Jul 6, 2016 at 10:32
  • Other way around should also work. Hit F6 at the right time. Insert floppy with drivers... Much harder to do though.
    – Hennes
    Jul 6, 2016 at 10:33

2 Answers 2

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I already did multi-OS VM, installing 2 different Linux OSes, so there is no reason for not being able to do so with Windows also. As usual, I would first install Windows.

Then to install a second (and third), I would:

  • either repartition the disk within windows (diskmgmt.msc),
  • or add a new disk in VM's hardware list
  • connect the .iso image of distro I want to the virtual CD/DVD-ROM device
  • reboot (making sure the CD-DVD has priority in VM's boot options)
  • proceed with installation using either the freed space or newly added disk

hth.

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There's no way to do it correctly. You should just create 3 different VMs, one per OS.

Hardware virtualization is based on a lot of low-level tricks for stability and performance and most of them may differ even on same OS versions. Let's say 1-year-old Parallels Desktop doesn't support OS X El Capitan properly, just because it has new kernel, new modules etc. There is no solution to emulate 100% genuine PC for every OS at affordable speed, it's always a tradeoff. That's why two new virtual machines for different OS'es should be different: the mechanisms of managing memory, file I/O etc are different. And if you are lucky enough to launch them, you lose speed optimizations

Moreover, that is a bad idea in its roots. Why should anyone use 3-in-1 VM if all 3 systems are working BAD? To save resources? But modern virtualization platforms are designed to be fast and reliable when they KNOW what are they doing. They could optimally share host resources on their own much better than 3-in-1-and-nothing working solution. In other words, "don't fix it if it ain't broken". p.s. There is a chance you could use Arch and Ubuntu in same VM, using some 'Other Linux' (with similar kernels), but no way for Windows. It will require own VM.And VMWare tools shouldn't work, ofcourse!

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    More supporting information on why would make this a viable answer.
    – Dave M
    Dec 3, 2015 at 13:32
  • Hardware virtualization is based on a lot of low-level tricks for stability and performance and most of them may differ even on same OS versions. Let's say 1-year-old Parallels Desktop doesn't support OS X El Capitan properly, just because it has new kernel, new modules etc. There is no solution to emulate 100% genuine PC for every OS at affordable speed, it's always a tradeoff. That's why two new virtual machines for different OS'es should be different: the mechanisms of managing memory, file I/O etc are different. And if you are lucky enough to launch them, you lose speed optimizations.
    – Pavel M.
    Dec 3, 2015 at 19:55
  • Moreover, that is a bad idea in its roots. Why should anyone use 3-in-1 VM if all 3 systems are working BAD? To save resources? But modern virtualization platforms are designed to be fast and reliable when they KNOW what are they doing. They could optimally share host resources on their own much better than 3-in-1-and-nothing working solution. In other words, "don't fix it if it ain't broken". p.s.There is a chance you could use Arch and Ubuntu in same VM, using some 'Other Linux' (with similar kernels), but no way for Windows. It will require own VM.And VMWare tools shouldn't work, ofcourse!
    – Pavel M.
    Dec 3, 2015 at 20:06

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