Issues in running Windows Longhorn (Vista pre-release)

[davide8226]

Hi everybody,
I have tried many of the old OSes available at the following link:

https://winworldpc.com/library/operating-systems

VirtualBox showed various issues, running from not booting the bootable floppy image, to get stuck at the beginning of the setup, to get stuck in the middle of the setup procedure, to issues with the graphics rendering of the setup procedure.
These especially happen with all the version of OS/2 (I have not been able to get one version of OS/2 running, apart OS/2 2.0) and Win NT 3.5 and 4.0.

I have thought of notifying these issues here, in case you may deem them as worth addressing (they are old OSes) and, subsequently, worth opening a set of tickets in case (upon trials on your side).

Best regards,
davide8226

[mpack]

I don't think it is useful to talk in generalities. Please give one concrete example - and include a zipped VM log.

You are correct that obsolete guests are likely to be assigned low priority. I would also have misgivings due to the fact that none of the linked installers seem to be official, and some seem to be potentially unstable betas.

The tutorials area gives tips on getting some of these obsolete guests up and running - from official install disks of course.

[davide8226]

I don't think it is useful to talk in generalities. Please give one concrete example - and include a zipped VM log.

You are correct that obsolete guests are likely to be assigned low priority. I would also have misgivings due to the fact that none of the linked installers seem to be official, and some seem to be potentially unstable betas.

The tutorials area gives tips on getting some of these obsolete guests up and running - from official install disks of course.

Ok, impossible to upload all the logs in once for the various OSes I tried.
Here attached is the one when I tried to install Windows Longhorn (pre-release of Vista). I got a BSOD notifying a hardware error.

[granada29]

You are not running the most recent release of VirtualBox 7.0.10.

Code: Select all

VirtualBox VM 7.0.6 r155176 darwin.amd64 (Jan 11 2023 17:40:04) release log

There were many bugs fixed in VirtualBox 7.0.10. You should upgrade from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads then try again.

If that fails, your macOS version (Big Sur) will allow you to install VirtualBox 6.1.x. That might be worth trying although you will have to go through the pain of installing the macOS kernel extensions (kexts) for this to work.

You can get the most recent release of VirtualBox 6.1 from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds

[granada29]

In addition, you only have 512MB ram allocated to the VM and a single CPU. I am no Windows expert but this looks a little light for a 64-Bit OS.

You may need to close some other host processes to free up additional RAM for your VM as you only have 1132MB available and 4GB in total.

[davide8226]

In addition, you only have 512MB ram allocated to the VM and a single CPU. I am no Windows expert but this looks a little light for a 64-Bit OS.

You may need to close some other host processes to free up additional RAM for your VM as you only have 1132MB available and 4GB in total.

Tried with an updated-to-latest-version VirtualBox and a VM with enhanced resources. Same issue.
Here attached is the log.

[granada29]

Looks like you are now trying to run XP - previously it was Vista.

Your resources are still very tight.

Code: Select all

00:00:02.332098 Host RAM: 4096MB (4.0GB) total, 759MB available
00:00:02.598355   RamSize           <integer> = 0x000000000c000000 (201 326 592, 192.0 MiB)
00:00:02.598950   VRamSize         <integer> = 0x0000000001000000 (16 777 216, 16.0 MiB)

You should try increasing the VRAM to 64MB
I don't know if 192MB of RAM is enough for XP - try raising to 256MB
Make more host ram available by shutting down web browser, email etc. You can use Activity Monitor to find what applications are using your host memory.

[mpack]

@davide: I asked you to chose a single concrete example (per topic). In fact that's a forum rule. Please do not change scenarios in mid discussion, it will only confuse matters. If it continues then I'll be forced to lock the topic.

I suggest that you continue with the XP scenario, given how tight resources are on your host.

@Granada: my first physical XP installation in 2002-ish had 64MB of RAM, so a basic XP install at that time did run in that - albeit slowly (paging a lot to my mechanical drives of the time). I quickly upgraded to 128MB and then 256MB. I still remember how I had to persuade my bosses at the time that people had a legitimate use for such excessive amounts of RAM...

[davide8226]

Looks like you are now trying to run XP - previously it was Vista.

Your resources are still very tight.

Code: Select all

00:00:02.332098 Host RAM: 4096MB (4.0GB) total, 759MB available
00:00:02.598355   RamSize           <integer> = 0x000000000c000000 (201 326 592, 192.0 MiB)
00:00:02.598950   VRamSize         <integer> = 0x0000000001000000 (16 777 216, 16.0 MiB)

You should try increasing the VRAM to 64MB
I don't know if 192MB of RAM is enough for XP - try raising to 256MB
Make more host ram available by shutting down web browser, email etc. You can use Activity Monitor to find what applications are using your host memory.

Sorry, I got confused with VMs... Here is the right log!

[davide8226]

@davide: I asked you to chose a single concrete example (per topic). In fact that's a forum rule. Please do not change scenarios in mid discussion, it will only confuse matters. If it continues then I'll be forced to lock the topic.

I suggest that you continue with the XP scenario, given how tight resources are on your host.

@Granada: my first physical XP installation in 2002-ish had 64MB of RAM, so a basic XP install at that time did run in that - albeit slowly (paging a lot to my mechanical drives of the time). I quickly upgraded to 128MB and then 256MB. I still remember how I had to persuade my bosses at the time that people had a legitimate use for such excessive amounts of RAM...

Yes, I know...

[mpack]

This is not going to work. Your host has 4GB RAM total, so you can't possibly assign 4GB to a VM.

00:00:02.480515 Host RAM: 4096MB (4.0GB) total, 1196MB available
...
00:00:02.510684 Guest OS type: 'WindowsVista_64'
...
00:00:02.693661 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000100000000 (4 294 967 296, 4.0 GiB)

You cannot afford to allocate more than 512MB to a VM.

And again, this the not the XP VM. Are you more interested in Vista? Then by all means make this topic about that scenario. Are you sure you have an installer for Vista 64bit? If so you will struggle to find enough RAM for it on this host - which has barely enough RAM for one 64bit OS, never mind two.

[davide8226]

This is not going to work. Your host has 4GB RAM total, so you can't possibly assign 4GB to a VM.

00:00:02.480515 Host RAM: 4096MB (4.0GB) total, 1196MB available
...
00:00:02.510684 Guest OS type: 'WindowsVista_64'
...
00:00:02.693661 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000100000000 (4 294 967 296, 4.0 GiB)

You cannot afford to allocate more than 512MB to a VM.

And again, this the not the XP VM. Are you more interested in Vista? Then by all means make this topic about that scenario. Are you sure you have an installer for Vista 64bit? If so you will struggle to find enough RAM for it on this host - which has barely enough RAM for one 64bit OS, never mind two.

Ok, please delete this thread, as it got too messy...!

[scottgus1]

We don't delete topics, but you can just let it be, it'll fade away soon.