wine users - Mar 2012 - Using a real windows installation as a wineprefix

Hello everybody, i got a question. Could it be possible to use an existing real
windows 7 installation (on a separate partition) as a wineprefix and run
programs from it?

> Hello everybody, i got a question. Could it be possible to use an existing
real windows 7 installation (on a separate partition) as a wineprefix and run
programs from it?
>
No. Do not do that. This will break both wine and your real windows install.

John

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 21:53, Evert7 <wineforum-user at winehq.org>
wrote:
> Hello everybody, i got a question. Could it be possible to use an existing
real windows 7 installation (on a separate partition) as a wineprefix and run
programs from it?
No. See http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-497f1a295d53dd3444f211df2b13312c7767afa2

There are two separate issues.

Never ever set WINEPREFIX to an existing windows installation, for instance if
you have windows on a dual-boot separate partition.  Wine will break that
windows installation by "updating" Windows with Wine's DLLs.

However, if there are programs that you "installed" in windows that
didn't really need to be installed, then you can invoke wine with the path
to the application.  Some applications come with installers, but don't
really install anything outside of what it put into it's installed directory
(no DLLs in \Windows\System32, no registry entries, etc...).  I've run quite
a few programs from my windows partition without copying them.  That being said,
I've also run into problems with those programs.  For instance, I often run
into a problem where the program is unable to write files because the partition
is NTFS or FAT-32.

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Evert7 <wineforum-user at winehq.org>
wrote:
> Hello everybody, i got a question. Could it be possible to use an existing
real windows 7 installation (on a separate
> partition) as a wineprefix and run programs from it?
Not unless you want to reinstall Windows.  The recommended (and most
useful) method is to re-install all programs in Wine.  This insures
that appropriate registry changes are made to the Wine registry, which
is not compatible with the Windows registry.

James

well thats quite a clear answer, but if you are able to configure wine (or
something else) to not overwrite any windows files, would there be any change
that applications work (in wine)?

ok, but think of a abstract layer on top of all important windows directories,
that contains all changes made by wine, but keeping the original windows files
untouched. Could it be possible?

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 8:43 AM, Evert7 <wineforum-user at winehq.org>
wrote:
> ok, but think of a abstract layer on top of all important windows
directories, that contains all changes made by wine,
> but keeping the original windows files untouched. Could it be possible?
>
No.

James

I'll try it anyway :)

I can't just get what should it give to you if you use Windows partition as
Wineprefix? )

What's the aim of it?

Can somebody explain? =)