Linux in Windows without a virtual partition..

Clarifications

http://www.winehq.org/ :)

You can run multipe OS's simultaneously with VMware, and you can test out the product without risk, as many VMware products are free downloads without any time limits on their use. They allow you to share data on-the-fly between OS's You might want to check out VMware Workstation here http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_downloads/vmware_workstation/7_0 . It comes in 2 flavors depending upon which OS (Windows or Linux) your computer uses.

As suggested by others this sounds like a prime use case for VMWare or Virtualbox. If a fully virtualised solution is not what you're looking for (i.e you just want to mount "real" Linux partitions from within windows there are some ext3 drivers for Windows (never used them myself) or if I remember correctly you can mount a "real" partition on a VMWare guest (it's been a few years since I last used VMWare.

Why not simply download VMware Workstation for Windows and try? During the setup for a virtual OS you are given a choice to accept virtual HDD storage in a dynamically changing file or to attach to a hardware HDD. See if you can point the VMware virtual machine to your Linux partition. It's a free download so you have nothing to lose http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_downloads/vmware_workstation/6_5

the answer is no. You can't boot one OS inside another without virtualization.

You could use something like http://wubi-installer.org/

But in short, you can't boot a traditionally installed OS into another in a dual-boot configuration.

You can start up a linux in your VMware (live CD) and let it mount your linux partition as an additional drive... You COULD also just configure physical access to the linux partition and run it off of VMware, but I would advise against it as it will reconfigure its drivers or crash (depending on the distribution). But why would you even try to do anything like this? If you want to access your linux partition from windows ust install and ext2 driver for windows... (if that happend to be the file-system you're using.)