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I currently have an Ubuntu VM guest on a Windows 10 host. I use Ubuntu for development but have found my Ubuntu performance to be poor. I tried several things to try to improve it, but now I'm thinking about directly installing Ubuntu and having a Windows guest in Ubuntu.

Would I be able to re-use the Windows license key that came with my computer? Do I just need to copy that key ahead of time? Are there any recommended steps that I should take to achieve the above? Would it be best to keep the existing partition used by Windows?

user994165
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  • Most Windows license keys are tied to the system hardware. In that case, Microsoft might give you pushback using the license inside of a VM. – Thomas Ward Jan 20 '19 at 20:30

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We can not say much on the type of licence you may have (or not have). It may be that your license is attached to the hardware/BIOS of your computer which would not make it valid for use in a virtual machine. Nevertheless it can be a general licence, and, depending on laws in the country you live it may be entirely legal and possible to reuse this licence in a (single!) virtual machine.

We are glad that we do not need to tackle with these kind of issues in Ubuntu.

Now to your other question. It is possible to use an existing partition in a virtual machine but I would not recommend to do so for the following reason:

  • the drive hardware can not be maintained safely through a virtual guest
  • the partition is of a rather fixed size and can not be easily extended or shrunk
  • porting the virtual machine to another host is near impossible
  • data from the guest on that partition should not be shared with the host

So it will make you life much easier to perform a fresh install of Windows in a virtual machine making use of a dynamically growing virtual drive. This virtual drive can then be carried to exported to anywhere else, including backups.

Of course you need to backup you data and import them to the virtual machine, or (recommended) to a shared directory for both, the host and the guest.

Takkat
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