Hardware/Memory BSOD Windows 7 64-bit [Guest], Vista 64-bit

[jubby2000]

Hey everyone,

I'm relatively new to virtualization, aside from installing Fusion and XP on a friend's Mac.

I'm running Vista Ultimate 64-bit and I'm trying to virtualize Windows 7 64-bit. Every time I attempt it (I've tried about 10 different times now), everything runs smoothly, install is easy, and then once I get to the Windows 7 desktop I either get a hardware BSOD after trying to install the Guest Additions (sometimes it installs right up to the video driver, then BSOD), OR I wait a few moments and get some kind of memory BSOD (the .vdi I made is 40 gigs, I can't possibly have run out of memory. I've tried it with all different combinations of RAM sizes and get the same thing).

When the guest system restarts it comes up in some sort of stripped down version of Windows 7 and will not revert back unless I completely reinstall. Can't mount, can't click on anything in the start menu, something about permissions. Safe mode is more functional than this mode (incidentally, Guest Additions is able to install there, but still BSOD in normal Windows).

My system has 8 gigs of RAM, Quad-Core processor @ 2.66, about 350 gigs of free space, NVIDIA 8500 GT video card, and I've tried it with no other programs running.

I've read through the forums, enabled VT-x, tried it with less than half RAM allotted, checked my logs and everything that needed enabling shows that it is enabled.

Is there something big that I'm missing? I guess my question is, what settings should I be using for this configuration? I've been trying 2 processors but I've also done 1, 3D acceleration, all different kinds of memory allotment for 3D acceleration, nested paging disabled, ACPI and IO APIC both enabled, PAE/NX disabled...

Any thought anyone? I can't think of any more things to try.

[Perryg]

Try setting it up with 2048 Meg of RAM, and I/O-APIC on.
Make a snapshot before installing the guest additions and see what happens.
If it still BSOD's look at the VBox logs (Vbox program GUI, machine, show logs) for errors indicated there.
If it still does the blue death on you start the guest following the procedure below and let us know what the error is.

VirtualBox provides a method of halting a guest when it wants to perform a reset. In order to enable this feature, issue the following command:

Code: Select all

VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxInternal/PDM/HaltOnReset" 1