virtualbox.org

Okay, hi.

I'm REALLY new to all this and I'm trying to install windows xp onto virtualbox. I'm currently running windows vista.
Right when I try to boot the disk, it tells me that it could not read from the boot medium, system halted.

I had reached a point to when it tried to format the partition and install xp, but stopped there as well.

If anyone could point me in the right direction, or show me a link to another question on here that says how to install xp, that would be great.

Like I said, I'm very new to this and I'm not looking to get insulted because of it.

VictorG wrote:Okay, hi.

I'm REALLY new to all this and I'm trying to install windows xp onto virtualbox. I'm currently running windows vista.
Right when I try to boot the disk, it tells me that it could not read from the boot medium, system halted.

I had reached a point to when it tried to format the partition and install xp, but stopped there as well.

If anyone could point me in the right direction, or show me a link to another question on here that says how to install xp, that would be great.

Like I said, I'm very new to this and I'm not looking to get insulted because of it.

Okay, to get Windows XP up and running, first you need to create a virtual machine. It's in the Help section. Refer to section 3.2 Creating a virtual machine for instructions for more information. Depending on the size of the hard disk image that you're creating, it will take quite a while.

Also, if you have the Windows XP installation CD, you can either use the physical drive to install the OS or the ISO image. Once that's done, you will also need to format the drive either as a FAT partition (2.5 GB to 4 GB), FAT32 partition (32 GB maximum; use the Windows Millennium Edition boot disk or a third party partitioning programme to create FAT32 formatted drives up to 2 TB) or a NTFS partition. An NTFS partition is recommended. You will also need to allocate at least 128 MB of memory for the guest operating system to use as well. 64 MB can limit system speed and performance.

Refer to this interesting Knowledge Base article on how to install Windows XP:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316941

The Windows XP installation should occupy at least 1.5 GB of disk space and with the security updates as well as programmes that were only designed for 32-bit Windows should take no more than about 4 GB to 6 GB in the Windows directory alone.

I had to use the Windows 98 Second Edition CD image before I upgraded to Windows XP and it works without problems.

If this is confusing to you, please let me know and I'll get things straightened out.

I'm wired on coffee right now, so bare with me.

I freed up 10gigs of unallocated partition space, I created the machine at 512MB base memory.

But every time I go to run the machine, and choose to boot windows xp from the disk, I get the same error message.

Your reply was helpful, but of course I still didn't get it to work.

VictorG wrote:I'm wired on coffee right now, so bare with me.

I freed up 10gigs of unallocated partition space, I created the machine at 512MB base memory.

But every time I go to run the machine, and choose to boot windows xp from the disk, I get the same error message.

Your reply was helpful, but of course I still didn't get it to work.

Okay, what error message are you getting when you try to boot Windows XP from the CD-ROM? I'll search up the problem that you might be receiving on Google.

By the way, I myself had resized the Windows XP partition three times...from 32 GB, down to 20 GB then back up to 64 GB. I'm planning to install Wubi through the Windows XP guest and I'm hoping to use a big portion of the 64 GB hard disk image.

I was even able to allocate 1 GB of memory and 64 MB of video memory for the guest.

Check if the XP install disc is actually bootable. You said that you got it to run the installer on the first part, so it should be bootable. You also need a large enough virtual hard drive to install XP. You need at least 5 GB, but more is recommended due to the size XP can take after installing a lot of patches and programs.

Okay, now I got the disk to boot, but as it goes to install the OS, I get this message:

Unable to allocate and lock memory. The virtual machine will be paused. Please close application to free up memory or close the VM.

Error ID: HostMemoryLow
Severity: Non-Fatal Error



The partition spaced that I freed up is roughly 10228MB

I thank you guys for your patience with me so far.

VictorG wrote:Okay, now I got the disk to boot, but as it goes to install the OS, I get this message:

Unable to allocate and lock memory. The virtual machine will be paused. Please close application to free up memory or close the VM.

Error ID: HostMemoryLow
Severity: Non-Fatal Error



The partition spaced that I freed up is roughly 10228MB

I thank you guys for your patience with me so far.

You're welcome.

How much memory does your host PC have? There are chances that you might not have enough memory to run Windows XP as a guest.

VictorG wrote:Okay, now I got the disk to boot, but as it goes to install the OS, I get this message:

Unable to allocate and lock memory. The virtual machine will be paused. Please close application to free up memory or close the VM.

Error ID: HostMemoryLow
Severity: Non-Fatal Error



The partition spaced that I freed up is roughly 10228MB

I thank you guys for your patience with me so far.

May i know how much you allocate your memory for your Guest machine?For my case,i am using Vista SP1 x86 and i have 4GB of memory and i allocate 1GB of memory for all of my virtual machines and so far it have no problem.

Base Memory: 1095 MB
Video Memory: 128 MB

(I dunno if that even helps)

See, when I said I'm new to this. I meant...like I know NOTHING. I don't even know where to look for some of the things I'm being asked to give information on.

VictorG wrote:Base Memory: 1095 MB
Video Memory: 128 MB

(I dunno if that even helps)

See, when I said I'm new to this. I meant...like I know NOTHING. I don't even know where to look for some of the things I'm being asked to give information on.

In order to get Windows XP guest installed, it would be smart to lower the amount of memory to no more than 25% of the installed memory on your computer.

For example, if your host PC has 1 GB of memory and 128 MB of video memory, you would have to allocate no more than 256 MB of memory and 32 MB of video memory for the guest, just to be safe.

Computers that have less than 1 GB of memory or less video RAM may not be so lucky, because less amount of memory may limit system performance and functionality.

For 64-bit PCs with 8 GB or more memory and 1 GB+ video RAM installed, it would safe to allocate no more than 2 GB of memory and 256 MB of video memory to the guest.

Okay, so I thank you guys for trying to help me. I realize that it's frustrating trying to work with someone who knows as little as I do.

Unfortunately, I cannot figure out how to get XP to work. SO, I tried Ubuntu instead, and got it working in less than an hour. Oddly, I like it a lot better than Windows, period. So I'm gonna toy around with this for a while.

Again, thanks.


--Victor

VictorG wrote:Okay, so I thank you guys for trying to help me. I realize that it's frustrating trying to work with someone who knows as little as I do.

Unfortunately, I cannot figure out how to get XP to work. SO, I tried Ubuntu instead, and got it working in less than an hour. Oddly, I like it a lot better than Windows, period. So I'm gonna toy around with this for a while.

Again, thanks.


--Victor

That's sound good. But why can't you figure out how to get Windows XP guest to work on your PC? If you can explain this, I'll try to help you out more.

I recently installed Wubi, in which it contains to Ubuntu 8.10 distro to use on Windows XP co-guest and it robbed 25 GB out of the 64 GB of available disk space on the guest. Wow...that's quite a way to get my guest operating system's hard disk image filled up. I may consider resizing the hard disk image to around 125 GB in the near future.

Now that Ubuntu hard disk image is working as a co-guest operating system along with Windows XP, I'm gonna try toying around with co-guest OS for a while.

Well, I couldn't get it to work because no matter what advice I followed, I still kept getting the same error message (see above, because I don't even remember what it said anymore).

To tell you the truth, I only wanted XP to play a game that I like. I don't particularly like windows in general, and I love the concept of Linux. While I'm still an extreme beginner, I'd like to try out a new OS all together.

But...if you're still willing to provide a step-by-step, from beginning to end instruction on how to get XP working on VB, I'll still give it a try.

Like I said, it's all for a freeware game that won't play on Vista.

VictorG wrote:Well, I couldn't get it to work because no matter what advice I followed, I still kept getting the same error message (see above, because I don't even remember what it said anymore).

To tell you the truth, I only wanted XP to play a game that I like. I don't particularly like windows in general, and I love the concept of Linux. While I'm still an extreme beginner, I'd like to try out a new OS all together.

But...if you're still willing to provide a step-by-step, from beginning to end instruction on how to get XP working on VB, I'll still give it a try.

Like I said, it's all for a freeware game that won't play on Vista.

Again, you might be getting that error message, because your Windows Vista's host is out of memory. I maybe wrong, but it would be wise to quit any applications that are running in the background, shutdown your guest and try installing Windows XP from there.

I've been playing with a couple of programmes that were only designed for Windows XP, btw.

Please check your CD to make sure it is 'clean' of finger prints, not an upgrade, and perhaps not an OEM.

I would definitely put another 1 GB stick into your host. VISTA is hungry all by itself and 1 GB is not enough, IMO.

Here are my settings that might help (I am new to this too, and except for the network config, I found the installation straigth forward).

I have XP Home running on top of Host VISTA Home Premium w 3GB RAM on AMD system.

My XP VM has 8 GB Virtual Drive space, just 192 MB of RAM allocated, and just 8 MB (I just took the default on this) of Video RAM.

Eventhough I have I have SATA drives, that is not enabled so the VM VDI uses IDE.

On the Advanced tab of General, the IDE Controller is PIIX4 (I have no idea what this means).

The CD/DVD has Mount enabled for the host and indicates the assigned drive letter of the host.

Once again, clean the CD, pump another stick of RAM, downsize the requirements of XP on the VM and should be good.

FCTC