Well, someone recommended that I check out GeFORCE NOW, which is a virtualized environment you can use within Linux to play a large number of games in the cloud. I’ve always been skeptical about that type of play, largely because the capacity of the system to provide a good gaming experience had not previously been available. However since I live alone and have a good broadband connection I tried it out and loved it. It’s indistinguishable from playing the game from your own computer.

So, since most of the apps I use are open-source or otherwise available for Linux, I decided to switch from Windows to Ubuntu 24.04. My PC has two hard drives as well as a NVME drive which hosts the Windows system, so I decided to delete and transfer what I could from a 1TB drive and installed Ubuntu on there. It was a breeze and I was quickly up and running. Ubuntu has very good hardware support so most things just worked, and the only thing I had to hunt down was a driver for the Logitech G13 gamepad I constantly use. I’ve been running this for about 3 weeks now and I have no desire to go back.

However, today I came up against an obstacle. On Windows I used Bitvise SSH client to connect to this server, and Bitvise saves its files in its own binary format. I found myself in a situation where I would have to go back to Windows to use Bitvise to connect to my server. Also while my current situation does not require that I have access to a Windows machine, that can change all too easily. So I decided to create a Windows virtual machine (VM from now on), but instead of using a virtual hard drive file, I would simply use the disk on which Windows is already installed. That makes a lot more sense. It’s just more efficient.

I found one set of instructions to help me do that, but it dates back to 2021 and hasn’t been updated more recently, so I spend some time figuring out the more current way to go about it.

How to run a Windows VM from an existing Windows disk

For this you will naturally need a computer running Linux, preferably something Debian-based like Ubuntu. You will also need to install VirtualBox on that computer (downloads here). You should also disable Bitlocker encryption from your Windows drive before proceeding. I didn’t have it enabled on my drive so I don’t know how that would affect the installation.

Set up your user

Your user will need to be part of two groups: “disk” (to enable raw disk access) and “vboxusers”.

sudo usermod -aG disk,vboxusers [user]

Also let’s create a folder “vms” in your home directory in which you will keep your VMs:

mkdir vms

Set up your Windows disk

First, find out where your Windows drive is mounted. By default when you install Ubuntu on a computer with FAT32 or NTFS drives, they will be accessible to Linux.

lshw -short -class disk,volume

This will show you a list of your hard disks and their partitions. Look for a disk that contains a “Windows FAT volume”, a “reserved partition” and one or more “Windows NTFS volumes” and note the entry in the Device column for the disk (not partition). Usually this will be “/dev/nvme0” (if you have a NVME disk) or “/dev/sda”.

Next, we’re going to create a special file that points to that disk using a utility that is installed with VirtualBox. Enter this as your regular user (not root):

VBoxManage createmedium disk --filename=vms/[disk file].vmdk --variant=RawDisk --format=VMDK --property RawDrive=[Windows drive]

This file points at the location of the Windows drive.

Create a VM

Now we’ll start using VirtualBox itself. But before we do, let’s install the VirtualBox Extension Pack (download from here). To install the file just double-click on it on the file. It will launch VirtualBox and the installation will take place.

In the VirtualBox dashboard, click on the Create a new virtual machine (VM) link.

1. In the VM Name field, enter a name for the virtual machine
2. The VM Folder should be “/home/[user]/vms”
3. In the OS field select Microsoft Windows
4. In the OS Version field select the version of Windows installed on your Windows disk.Win12
5. Click on the Next button at the bottom right of the New Virtual Machine window.
6. Under Specify virtual hardware, adjust the Base Memory and Number of CPUs. Bring the Disk Size slider to the lowest value. Note that using 16GB (or more) of RAM is highly recommended otherwise you’ll find the VM experience very taxing, but keep in mind that this memory will not be available to your Linux apps while the VM is running.
7. Select Use EFI
8. Click on the Next button.
9. Click on the Finish button.

Attach The Windows Disk to the VM

Now we’ll attach the pointer file we created in step 1 to the VM.

1. In the Machines tab of VirtualBox Manager, right-click on the new VM and click on Settings.
2. In the [VM]-Settings window, select the Storage tab.
3. You’ll see a .vdi file which we won’t be using. Click on the Add Attachment button at the bottom right of the Devices box (see below) and select Hard disk from the dropdown menu.
4. In the Hard Disk selector window, click the Add button.
5. Select the .vmdk file you created earlier in the file selection dialog box.
6. With the .vmdk file selected, click on the Choose button.
7. In the [VM]-Settings window, select the .vdi file, and click on the Remove Attachment button (next to the Add Attachment button).
8. Click OK to save your VM configuration.

Run Your VM

Nothing left to do but to run the VM and make sure it works, so in the Machines tab of VirtualBox Manager, right-click on the VM you just edited and select Start > Start with GUI.

You should be able to log into your Windows installation.

If you have tried in the past to install Linux and modified the UEFI partition of your boot disk… well, you will then have to navigate around the disk using the GRUB CLI to fix your boot sequence. This is beyond the scope of this particular tutorial, but instructions are easily found online. I had to do this myself.

Something else that came to mind as I was writing this was to try and see if I can do the same thing using QEMU instead of VirtualBox, which I will also write a tutorial for if I can manage to do it.

Keep in mind that virtualization at the local level can be a bit tricky and resource-intensive. It’s also one of the rare things that can completely freeze up your system and force you to reboot it — that’s called a kernel panic.

I’ve written here a few times about Windows Vista, I think it’s pretty damn terrible. I really haven’t had *anything* positive to say about it. It offers nothing substantial over XP but needs twice the system resources, and really serves no need except Microsoft’s (namely, to increase OS revenue and let Bill get that additional ivory backscratcher he’s been eyeing). So clearly, I’d have to have withstood some form of brain damage to then go and spend more money on what is essentially more Vista. Something that offers little additional functionality, and probably requires even more resources.

And then I get this bit of good news in my inbox. If I decide to go with the slower, more DRM-shackled computing experience I can have that wonderful experience on not one but TWO PCs! What a dream. So I asked myself, do I have TWO PCs that I want to run slower and with poorer hardware support?

Well, as a matter of fact no… I think my computing experience is fine with XP and Ubuntu, really. I have Vista installed on one of my PCs — but I’m really not using it; it was something I got for free because of an upgrade program and I’ve really only made use of it when Halo 2 came out for the PC (and a tepid-tastic experience that was, really). I guess Redmond really doesn’t get the fact you’re really not going to make anyone optimistic about Vista, unless you pay them to sell it of course.

This wonderful offer did make me smirk a little, I have to admit. With all these “special offers” it’s becoming pretty clear that Vista retail is a flop and that Microsoft isn’t too far from the point where it’s going to consider giving it away, or even maybe paying people to use it — I have heard from trusted sources that Microsoft has some pretty hefty rewards for high-profile bloggers who move on from Windows to open-source solutions. Maybe the same phenomenon is about to hit the retail channels. That might have the distinct advantage of making Vista actually worth using. In any case it seems that bribing your user base must be more expensive than actually listening to what customers want, at least for the Redmond giant.

The way a Vista computer gets restored is by a two-step process:

1. Windows Vista is installed off the CD
2. The manufacturer then has Vista run an installer which runs until all the devices on the PC are installed.
3. Every time an installer needs a restart, the computer restarts, and the installer picks up where it left off.
4. Your PC will restart. And restart. And restart.

This will go on for hours, and the hard disk is spinning the whole time. What this means is that the computer is on, you see your desktop, but if you try and actually use your computer by starting an application the computer is so slow and unresponsive it’s not useable. All you see is an item in your taskbar that shows the name of the installer.

This is where it gets funny. It’s the File Based Installer Graphical User Interface Manager. But that would be too long for an application name, so they used acronyms. As a result the installer application is called “FBI Gui Manager”.

So your computer is on but you can’t really use it, and that seems because of a program called “FBI Gui Manager”; you can’t stop this application, and to top it off it doesn’t have an interface, so if you click on it you don’t see a window. You hear your hard drive working constantly, and if you have a laptop you notice that it’s grown hot, and the fan is constantly running at maximum flow as well. And it literally runs for hours. Take this situation, add a user who’s a bit paranoid, combine with the relatively-recent attention to the whole “warrantless wiretapping” stories that have been coming out of the United States, and you have the potential to make a lot of your users very uncomfortable indeed!

And indeed there are a few posts on blogs and question sites from users who are very scared that their computer is being infiltrated by the FBI, or a victim of spyware.

This strikes me as being just plain bad useability.

Now we’re used to this term being used to define the position of elements on a window, or the way one should build interactive elements of applications. So what is the link between this and the name of an application? Well, the first principle of useability, in a very broad sense, is that you should design with your user in mind. And HP really hasn’t followed this principle when it came to designing the user experience of restoring the computer on one’s computer.

In this case, while it is true that you have to be pretty paranoid (and unimaginative, it has to be said) to be made uncomfortable by having a program called “FBI Gui Manager” being in control of your PC, the name is evidently bad useability because it has made some of HP’s customers uncomfortable.

Moreover, there is absolutely no need for this program to have that name. What’s wrong with using the name “Installation Manager” or “HP Installation Manager”? Nothing, that’s what! It’s not difficult in any way to change the name of an installer, even in this age of Vista driver and application signing. This is not a small third-party garage software operation here, HP is a major OEM partner and I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t have a certain level of priority with Microsoft when it comes to software signing.

Now perhaps HP wants to use a name for this particular installer to differentiate it from older installers. There’s no reason whatsoever to do this of course, because those restore discs are supposed to be only installable on one specific model (or at least model family) of computer. The only thing a support rep should need to ask is what model the user has.

And frankly, there’s really no need to call the software project “File Base Installer” in the first place. This just has to be the most generic, and hence practically meaningless name I have ever seen in a software project. Apparently no one could be bothered to even remember the name of the company when it was time to give this program a name. As far as I know there is really only one installer in existence that ISN’T file-based, and that’s Java’s Web Start. All other installers get downloaded to your PC and executed from there, even if that process is somewhat obfuscated by the operating system. So as a distinguishing name for this installer application — one used by everyone who needs to reinstall the computer software using the official DVD — “File Based Installer” both fails to be useable in that it says almost nothing about the purpose of the application, and it risks making people uncomfortable because of its unfortunate initials (FBI).

This is not the first time that an abbreviation for the name of a piece of software causes some controversy. The most famous incident in the so-far-short history of computing was a Microsoft memory-resident that would alert you when MS had released a critical update for windows. Unwisely Microsoft decided to call it the Critical Update Notification Tool. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what’s wrong with this name. Now fortunately Microsoft did not name any software using the abbreviation of the name for this infamous piece of software, but enough people noticed that it became an embarassment for Redmond.

The lesson seems simple. Use a little common sense when you name a piece of software, and run the name by a few people. Have more eyes looking at the name and its various permutations, like abbreviations and acronyms.

So, in retrospect, it’s bad useability on many, many levels:

1. Vista’s installation procedure for OEMs is really not useable. I hope they’ve improved it since the time my recovery CD was initially published.
2. When you have a program that takes over your computer for several hours, it would be a good idea to give it an interface. At the very least you want to let the user know what’s happening. It’s not difficult and it’s not resource-intensive. It’s the way almost all proper installers run.
3. The application that runs the installer shows a rather unfortunate name in the taskbar.
4. The application has the wrong name altogether, which is the cause of #2. It’s too generic and redundant to be distinctive and useful.

The lesson here is that useability is a concept which really should be applied not only to the obvious parts of the computer experience, but to things like application names and the PC restoring process as well. The user doesn’t stop being a user while his computer is restoring, especially when the process lasts for several hours for some hard-to-imagine reason.

Edit: as it turns out the restoring process does not take quite as long as I think, although it will still take well over 1 hour. What happened is that on my initial try the restoring did not work properly, and as a result after it was done the computer went into a ridiculously long cycle of rebooting. How long? Well, I started restoring the PC at 8pm. At 1am I decided that this was just too damn long, so I shut down and started re-restoring, and by the time I saw the laptop again at 8am it had been restored properly. So, it looks like our File-Based Installer needs a little QA as well as better useability…