Hello all,

I'm playing with Vmware at the moment in a configuration I've never tried before, but I've been forced into.

I have a PC with Windows XP on it, I've made it dual boot.

the partition table looks like this

disk = /dev/sda

sda1 = existing windows XP install
sda2 = /boot
sda3 = swap
sda4 = /

I'm now running under linux, and I've installed vmware.
I am using vmware to boot the existing OS on sda1 (so from my linux install I have access to the existing windows XP OS)

I've set this up fine, and told the vmware configuration to access/boot from

advanced disk ---> physical disk ----> individual partitions ---> partition 0 (sda1)

I then start the vm which starts ok - but then loads the boot sector from sda which is grub, the VM panics and dies.

Can I get around this, make grub not panic it, or perhaps do something clever that says use this partition, but boot it like this etc.

I've never had the issue of booting an existing os from the same disk as the host system.

any advice and tips would be great.