Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Discussions about using Windows guests in VirtualBox.
sonicfrequency
Posts: 15
Joined: 8. Jun 2012, 03:19

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by sonicfrequency »

I have tried all your suggestions so far. Created VBoxManage scripts etc. instead of editing the vbox file directly.

Also, I found another thing to narrow this problem down. I'm not necessarily asking for any feedback. This is more of a log for future use if other people have a similar virtual Windows activation problem.
  • The only ExtraDataParameter I need in my vbox file is the reference to the SLIC.bin file! I can activate with Microsoft without specifying any other parameters (although I have tried with & without specifying all parameters.)
  • My virtual activation only fails when I reboot Linux Mint and attempt to virtualize Windows again. (I don't have to boot Windows natively for it to cause the VM to fail activation.) This leads me to believe my distro of Linux is resetting SOME parameter in itself as host OS to make my virtual machine fail authentication after reboot. Perhpas the problem lies OUTSIDE of the VM setup!
  • To fix my activation, I can either recreate the SLIC.bin file, or recreate the virtual machine and reference the old SLIC.bin file.
  • And finally, I am even more confused exactly where the problem lies, but this has been one hell of a project so far and I am not going to give up!
Lauscher
Posts: 47
Joined: 14. Mar 2012, 14:19
Primary OS: Ubuntu other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows XP, Ubuntu 7.04+10.04, Xubuntu 11.10
Location: Germany

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by Lauscher »

By the way, I was getting a blue screen stop error when attempting to boot using the MBR method. I had to edit the system registry in Windows 7. MERGEIDE does not set the flag by default.

I simply navigated to regedit > Computer\HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\services\LSI_SAS\ and set start Dword to "0."

Hopefully the helps some people with the bluescreen error on your German forum!
Thank you for your hint! Which BSOD message did you get? 0xc000000e or another one?
sonicfrequency
Posts: 15
Joined: 8. Jun 2012, 03:19

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by sonicfrequency »

I couldn't catch the error, the BSOD was too fast for me, but I did see about 4 different stop errors listed when it flashed by.
sonicfrequency
Posts: 15
Joined: 8. Jun 2012, 03:19

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by sonicfrequency »

Ok,OS activation successfull after rebooting each OS both natively and virtually.

Solution (which I swear I've tried) was to move the SLIC.bin to the /root directory and reference it absolutely when specifying the parameter in the VBoxManage command or the .vbox file.

It appears if the SLIC.bin is in the same directory as the VM, it bugs until it is recreated. This makes sense since the vbox file is reloaded after each run.

Now to work on Office 2010 detecting hardware changes and requiring reactivation. Haha! :roll:
sonicfrequency
Posts: 15
Joined: 8. Jun 2012, 03:19

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by sonicfrequency »

Finally, Office 2010 is activated both natively and virtually. My license is good for two installations though.

I used the script that declares the model, firmware and serial number of the hdd.

Then I messed with the storage settings until Device Manager appeared as an "ATA Device" with the same model, firmware and serial in Device manager. I had to make sure the .vmdk was added under the "IDE Controller" storage tree in Virtualbox.

Finally, I had to call Microsoft to activate over the phone, not over the internet. Internet activation required me to reactivate every time I switched between native boot and virtual machine.

Cheers, gents.
Mike1234
Posts: 10
Joined: 8. Jan 2013, 00:09

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by Mike1234 »

I had windows 7 working on my dell laptop, I then used the same partition to boot vm and it is working good, but now when I go back native I get the blue screen if I try to open some heavy application like visual studio.

any idea what is going on ?
virtualhuman
Posts: 53
Joined: 22. Jan 2013, 22:11

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by virtualhuman »

Hey guys,

I managed to follow the guide and everything went fine, except that Windows will try to start but produce the follwing error:

Image

Any suggestions please?
Lauscher
Posts: 47
Joined: 14. Mar 2012, 14:19
Primary OS: Ubuntu other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows XP, Ubuntu 7.04+10.04, Xubuntu 11.10
Location: Germany

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by Lauscher »

Hello virtualhuman,

the error 0xc000000e is caused by an incorrect harddisk id in your virtual MBR.
A solution is described in this german Howto: Dualboot-Windows virtualisieren, translated you find it here.
virtualhuman
Posts: 53
Joined: 22. Jan 2013, 22:11

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by virtualhuman »

Thank you for the quick reply, I'll give that a try right now.

*edit*

I changed the disk ID as per the instructions by using fdisk, this got the Windows recovery to recognize the C:\Windows installation, but instead of doing a recovery, I run these two commands:
bootrec.exe /FixMbr
bootrec.exe /rebuildBCD

thank you for your help!
virtualhuman
Posts: 53
Joined: 22. Jan 2013, 22:11

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by virtualhuman »

I just wanted to report, that VIRTUALBOX IS AMAZING ! :)

It is great fun to boot my regular windoze7 installation under Linux. It runs so fast that I forget its virtualized !!!

When I'm showing things to people, they don't even realize that windoze7 is running like that under Linux, everything is working fine and fast.

I did try to play a game but that didn't work because the games don't have direct access to the graphics card and complain that there is no support for pixel shaders and other similar stuff. Maybe in the future when VT-d becomes more popular, we'll be able to run the latest games as well. No big deal for me since I don't play games, but just wanted to test the environment.

The whole procedure was very interesting for me, because I leared a few more things about how things work. I created my own MBR, customized a SLIC table, loaded a bunch of custom options to make the virtual system look like the real one (dmi settings), and even played with the various virtualbox options.

Anyway, great work people!
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by mpack »

Sounds like you're learning fast. It was the learning that I found most fun about VMs as well. You can experiment risk free, knowing you can throw the VM away if it doesn't work out. And yes, for common (office) apps it can be hard to tell you aren't running on native hardware, esp if like me you have a habit of turning off the distracting onscreen widgets anyway.
Calavera
Posts: 1
Joined: 27. May 2013, 11:10

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by Calavera »

Hi all, after a few hours of struggling, I managed to get the Windows 7 (32 bit) booting both natively and as a virtual guest on Xubuntu 12.10 (64 bit). Had to upgrade to latest version of Virtualbox (from 4.1.18 to 4.2.12), since there was a random freezing after a few minutes running as a guest (maybe related to multiprocessing support, I don't know). I also had to change a few parameters in Windows registry to correctly detect different hard-drive during the boot (I had BSOD there). All the other action are taken from this thread/original guide.

But still, there are some things whose I am unsure how to solve:
- natively booted Windows randomly crashes (every few minutes, so it's unsuable) to BSOD due to igdkmd32.sys - intel HD graphics driver (it's possibly related to virtualbox guest additions)
- Windows 7 needs the activation again, but I am sure that I passed to Virtualbox all the needed parameters from dmidecode (maybe I'll look into SLIC.bin solution which I found mentioned in this thread)

Do you have any ideas or recommendations how to solve the two issues? I have a notebook with SSD drive (Kingston) and Core i5 Ivy bridge processor, which caused me a lot of struggling even with plain linux (intel drivers are not as good as I would expect them to be...).

Many thanks to all of you.
rjbailey
Posts: 4
Joined: 23. Aug 2013, 04:32

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by rjbailey »

Can someone please boil down the instructions that have worked to enable Win7 booting in both VM and Bootcamp without requiring reactivation? I have waded through this thread but haven't found instructions I can actually understand. I appreciate the many hours you have all spent on this. I have found a few sites that have published steps to do this, and yet they never seem to work for me. Many thanks.
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by mpack »

This is just the discussion thread. Have you actually read the tutorial it discusses? See the "Howtos and Tutorials" area if not.
rjbailey
Posts: 4
Joined: 23. Aug 2013, 04:32

Re: Discuss: HOWTO: Windows 7: In both VM and native

Post by rjbailey »

Yes, and it fails to work. That's my point. Is there more to it than following the dmidecode routine? I've done that and it doesn't prevent reactivation.
Post Reply