Is it possible to have a dual boot system with Windows that can ALSO be booted into a virtual machine optionally?

I have been looking for a solution to this for some time now. I want the convenience of a virtual Windows environment that can run simultaneously with OS X Lion--something I have right now using Virtualbox. But at the same time, there are graphics and processor-intensive Windows applications (for me, games and engineering applications) that don't run well at all in a virtual machine. So, here is what I am looking for:
A dual boot (i.e. bootcamp) system running Windows 7 and OS X Lion in which the Windows 7 machine can EITHER be booted as a virtual machine while running OS X OR booted physically so as to utitlize all system resources. The real trick however, is that I I want the virtual machine and the physical machine to be the exact same system. Meaning, if I boot physically into Windows and change something... rename a file, run a program and create a file, etc... those changes will all appear in the virtual machine.
Now, what are my options? I have read about Virtualbox and VMWare Fusion's "Raw Disk access" function but I can't tell if that's what I'm looking for or not... I half-thought that they were talking about converting a physical OS into a virtual machine, but without the intention of booting the physical OS again...
Also, I'm open to any software, free or otherwise. Thanks!

both VMWare Fusion & Parallels Desktop for Mac can use a bootcamp Windows installation as VM exactly like you want.

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The Apple Support Communities are an international user to user technical support forum. As a man from Mexico, Spanish is my native tongue. I do not speak English very well, however, I do write in English with the aid of the Mac OS X spelling and grammar checks. I also live in a culture perhaps very very different from your own. When offering advice in the ASC, my comments are not meant to be anything more than helpful and certainly not to be taken as insults.
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You are limited to four PRIMARY partitions on an MBR disk.
But other than the "active" partition (i.e. the small 100MB "system reserved" partition where Boot Manager is placed from doing a cold Windows install on an empty drive, or the 1.4GB equivalent Boot Manager partition that Lenovo provides along with other tools and utilities), all other partitions on the drive can be "logical". They are not required to be PRIMARY, although Lenovo delivers its partitions that way. But you can change that.
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Yes, that means even the Windows system partition itself (i.e. "C") can be on a LOGICAL partition. It's only that one "active" partition (where the BIOS goes to find Boot Manager and its menu, and kick off the rest of the system boot process) which truly must be PRIMARY. That's the only requirement.
So, if you want to use MiniTool's Partition Wizard to carve out sufficient free space for your second Windows 7 partition (by shrinking your existing Win8 partition), you can create one or more logical partitions inside that new free space, and do the Win7 install to one of those empty logical partitions. You can then use a second logical partition in that same free space for "data", if you want.
Note that Partition Wizard can even convert one of your existing primary partitions to logical (i.e. convert it to an "extended partition", inside of which will be then be the original primary partition now converted to logical). You can then shrink or move/resize the partitions on the drive (both primary and logical) however you want, to perhaps make room for additional "logical" partitions inside of that now present "extended partition" which can hold up to 120. You can even convert ALL of your primary partitions except for the one "active" partition (which MUST BE PRIMARY) to logical partitions, which gives you maximum flexibility in having even more than just two bootable OS's along with one or more data partitions, etc., up to 120 logical partitions... plus the one "active" primary Boot Manager "system reserved" partition which must be kept.

Can I dual boot Mac with Windows?

Hi all,
At the moment I have Windows 7 32 bit OS. I've always wanted either an iMac, or atleast the Mac OS. I've recently found out it's only £20.99, and i've always thought it was a lot more than that, which is a bargain! The only thing which is stopping me from buying it at the moment, is that certain programs which I use reguarlarly won't work on Mac, and I really need those programs. Is their anyway I could dual-boot it with Windows 7, so I give Windows 7 say only 8gb of my hard drive, and Mac the rest?
I will appreciate any answers, and thanks for tackling this for me!

ryanroks1 wrote:
Thanks for helping
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Is it possible to build a project with Labview 2009 on a Windows XP system, that is useful for a system with windows 7 on it?
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Is it possible to have a dual boot system with Windows that can ALSO be booted into a virtual machine optionally?

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