Patent ID: 7536541

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a computer; a hard disk on the computer; a display on the computer; a boot manager on the computer, the boot manager configured to display a boot menu on the display upon startup of the computer; a first boot image managed by the boot manager, the first boot image including a first operating system (OS) to run on the computer from a first partition on the hard disk; a new hosting OS configured to launch and manage a plurality of virtual machine (VM) instances; a converter to convert the first boot image to a first VM instance to run under the new hosting OS; a second boot image managed by the boot manager, the second boot image including a second OS to run on the computer from a second partition on the hard disk, wherein the converter converts the second boot image to a second VM instance to run under the new hosting OS; a conflict detector to detect a conflict between the first VM instance and the second VM instance; and a conflict resolver to resolve the detected conflict; wherein the conflict resolver includes: a conflict notifier to notify a user of the detected conflict; and a resolution selector to enable the user to select a preferred resolution.