Windows 2000 PRO Guest Install from CD

[GWalker]

I am trying to use from page 141 of VirtualBoxUserManual.pdf:

11.2.2 Windows 2000 installation failures
When installing Windows 2000 guests, you might run into one of the following issues:
• Installation reboots, usually during component registration.
• Installation fills the whole hard disk with empty log files.
• Installation complains about a failure installing msgina.dll.

In my case, my VM named Windows 2000 Professional continues to reboot over and over, each time accessing the bootable media that is in the mounted CD/DVD drive.

The instructions say:

These problems are all caused by a bug in the hard disk driver of Windows 2000.
After issuing a hard disk request, there is a race condition in the Windows driver code
which leads to corruption if the operation completes too fast, i.e. the hardware interrupt
from the IDE controller arrives too soon. With physical hardware, there is a
guaranteed delay in most systems so the problem is usually hidden there (however it
should be possible to reproduce it on physical hardware as well). In a virtual environment,
it is possible for the operation to be done immediately (especially on very fast
systems with multiple CPUs) and the interrupt is signaled sooner than on a physical
system. The solution is to introduce an artificial delay before delivering such interrupts.
This delay can be configured for a VM using the following command:
VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME
"VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/IRQDelay" 1
This sets the delay to one millisecond. In case this doesn’t help, increase it to a value
between 1 and 5 milliseconds. Please note that this slows down disk performance.
After installation, you should be able to remove the key (or set it to 0).

My VM is named Windows 2000 Professional, so I open the Terminal for OSX 10.4.11 and use the syntax:

VBoxManage setextradata Windows 2000 Professional
"VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/IRQDelay" 5

The Terminal returns:

ERROR: Could not find a registered machine named 'Windows'
Details: code VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80bb0001), component VirtualBox, interface IVirtualBox, callee nsISupports
Context: "FindMachine(Bstr(a->argv[0]), machine.asOutParam())" at line 1241 of file VBoxManage.cpp
Macintosh:~ georgewalker$ "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/IRQDelay" 5
-bash: VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/IRQDelay: No such file or directory
Macintosh:~ georgewalker$ VBoxManage setextradata Windows 2000 Professional
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 2.2.0
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

All efforts to help are appreciated.

Thanks and regards.

[vbox4me2]

Simple mistake...
VBoxManage setextradata "Windows 2000 Professional" "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3ide/0/Config/IRQDelay" 5
Hence note the extra quotes.

[GWalker]

Thanks vbox4me2,

I took the following steps:

1) Open terminal.app using OS 10.4.11 and enter syntax at prompt Macintosh:~georgewalker$

VBoxManage setextradata "Windows 2000 Professional" "VBoxInternal/Devices/piix3iide/0/Config/IRQDelay" 5

The Terminal displays is now:
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface 2.2.0
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems

Macintosh:~georgewalker$

2)Insert Windows 2000 PRO CD into the CD/DVD drive.

3)Launch VirtualBox and <Start> for Windows 2000 Professional

The error message is now:

"Failed to start the virtual machine Windows 2000 Professional.

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: Console
Interface: IConsole{9511bc54-15ee-4ddf-808e-472aba03809c}

A lot to endure for a non-programmer MAC person!

My laptop is MB PRO 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM

Many thanks!

[vbox4me2]

I don't know what ppl are doing to get these errors with w2k but every new and migrated VM worked for me, take a relative small VM hdd like 20gb, set only acpi, everything else off, select only IDE mode no sata and of it goes. Try VBox 2.2.2 and use an ISO image instead of the CD.

[GWalker]

Thanks. What is a good tool to create the .ISO image of the CD?

[vbox4me2]

Nero does it for me.

[Groo779]

I racked my head on this for a day or two... I tried the 1-5Ms delay that is talked about in the manual, which did not work. I tried several other ideas from other users which also did not work... What I found was the glitch in W2K was most prevalent on IDE hard drives. So, what did I do? I created a SCSI Hard disk controller... open the VM's settings, go to storage, right click in a blank portion of the storage tree, select "Add SCSI device", blah blah... and the important part of this is: set the scsi type to bus... I didn't have to set a delay on the drive or change any other settings... It's installed and working brilliantly.

I know this is an older thread, but I know there are others on the hunt for solutions for this so I figured I would throw this in for people as another possible solution to their difficulties with Win2k in Virtualbox.

*Edit

And this worked on version 4.2.12 R84980.... so, there shouldn't be any need to DL an older version.

[michaln]

I racked my head on this for a day or two... I tried the 1-5Ms delay that is talked about in the manual, which did not work.

There's 99.9% likelihood you did something wrong... the workaround does the job for everyone else.

That said, yes, using a BusLogic SCSI controller sidesteps the problem entirely. LSI Logic won't work as Windows 2000 doesn't come with drivers for it.