26
votes
Accepted
Is this possible to boot an OS from some kind of a file?
Yes, that's more or less how every Linux "live USB" system works. They all boot from a read-only filesystem image (often a .squashfs file).
The bootloader is not really involved (it gets out ...
- 429k
7
votes
Is this possible to boot an OS from some kind of a file?
Yes, this is entirely possible, and the following is one way
of doing it.
In Windows, you could have an entire disk with its file-system stored
in a .vhdx or a .vhd file.
Then you can use diskpart to ...
- 458k
5
votes
Is this possible to boot an OS from some kind of a file?
You might find the BeOS Personal Edition interesting. Released in 2000, this was a free version of the BeOS operating system that installed on a Windows 95/98 system. The OS image itself was simply ...
- 746
4
votes
Is this possible to boot an OS from some kind of a file?
Every OS already boots from 'a file', which tells it what other things it needs to look for to continue the process. At boot, a computer is only just smart enough to know what the first thing it needs ...
- 47.7k
4
votes
Is this possible to boot an OS from some kind of a file?
Other answers describe what you probably were thinking of. This answer deliberately describes some concepts in a way you most likely did not think of.
Consider a different view; consider these facts:
...
- 70.2k
1
vote
Is this possible to boot an OS from some kind of a file?
grub2 can boot from any ISO file that are setup as Casper bootable. The default Live ISO Ubuntu is Casper-compatible ISO, for example, and I've actually done this a couple times to have grub boot ...
- 4,527
1
vote
Find out which process is locking a file or folder in Windows
SysInternal's handle utility is designed exactly for this problem for the command line. Just execute the following:
handle -a path
Here is an example output:
→handle -a "C:\Users\me\AppData\...
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