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My first ever posting to this list: I hope the content is appropriate.
I have a VT-x and VT-d capable machine which is currently set up as a regular Windows 7 machine and want to do the following with it:
1) Boot into Xen from CD
2) VT-d all of the system hardware except for the NIC into a Windows HVM. Notably, this will include VT-d-ing the hard disk (which includes the bootable Windows partition) into the Windows HVM
3) Launch the Windows HVM from the current Windows disk partition
I assume that Windows should manage this successfully, since it will see all the same hardware as when it is booted as a physical machine, except that the NIC has been removed? And I'll obviously have to create a custom Xen Live CD with the appropriate VT-d settings for the hardware in question.
Would be grateful for any pointers on whether / how this is possible. From my reading around the topic, it looks like the only bit that's really non-standard is that the physical boot device is to be VT-d into the Windows HVM, rather than booting from a virtual storage device.
By the way, the reason for doing this is in order to subsequently connect the Windows HVM to a virtualised NIC and to be able to modify the networking behaviour using networking code within Dom0. However, I also need to be able to boot the Windows machine natively (ie with direct access to the physical NIC) in some circumstances.
Thanks,
Henry | 
