NVIDIA Driver Not Working in Windows 8 Guest

[Abdo]

Hi there,

I recently installed Windows 8 in virtualbox and enabled the 3d acceleration. However, every time I try to install the NVIDIA driver I get an error message saying that the driver couldn't find compatible graphics hardware. I use Ubuntu 12.04 as the host OS.

How can I get the driver to work in Windows 8

[noteirak]

You can't. Virtualbox doesn't show the physical graphic card. It provied an emulated one to the guest - the very purpose of Virtualization.
You can improve graphics by installing the guest additions in the guest. See the User Manual.

[Abdo]

The graphics is working well because I already installed the guest additions. The problem is the NVIDIA driver is required for certain programs to work smoothly, and there are neither Linux-versions of those programs nor reliable alternatives for them. This is why I decided to use Windows virtual machine in the first place.

[noteirak]

Then that won't work. Virtualbox doesn't emulate a NVIDIA graphic card, so the drivers are useless in the guest.

[Abdo]

Thank you noteirak. I really appreciate your help. I'll try to figure out a way to make those programs work without the graphics card installed.