Take the 2-minute tour ×  I want to do two things:    1. Set up
a virtual machine on Windows 7 to run Ubuntu   2. Set up a way
for the virtual machine to read the windows disk or windows to
have read/write access to the virtual machine's disk. My goal is
to have a place where both Ubuntu and Windows can read and
write.  What software is good for this task? Are their free
programs that can run virtual machines?  Also if my machine is
running Windows 7 64-bit, can I install Ubuntu 32-bit? Or am I
forced to use Ubuntu 64-bit? Or does it not matter?
share|improve this question  1 Answer 1  up vote 6 down vote
accepted  There is a variety of virtualization software out
there, but you may want to try VirtualBox.  When you create your
virtual machine, you can specify the type of processor you have.
Thus, you can select whether your virtual machine will have a
32-bit processor or a 64-bit processor. In other words, you can
freely install Ubuntu 32-bit on your virtual machine, even
though the host OS (Windows 7) is 6