virtualbox.org

Hi, I just installed vbox 3.0.0 on my WS 2008 Enterprise (32-bit version). The CPU is an Athlon x2, with 8 GB of RAM.

Anyway, I can start a guest Linux or any other guest OS with 1 or 2 GB RAM, but I get a Guru Meditation error after a while - which I think it is memory-related. Here is what I get at the end of a log file from crashed VM:
I tried with or without AMD-V and PAE extensions, same result every time.

Anyway, is this configuration even supported? Can vbox VM access >4GB RAM on a 32-bit system?

BTW, I also tried the competing commercial product (vmware), it works without issues, but is somewhat slower than vbox.

Perhaps you need to read Chapter 13. Known limitations of the VBox Users Guide. See if this issue relates to your situation.

Thanks.

I updated to 3.0.2 recently, and through some trial-and-error I found out that maximum RAM for a single virtual machine on my system is somewhere around 1800 MB. If I reduce VM RAM to that amount or less, I can start 3 or more VMs and they allocate physical system memory all the way up to 8 GB as expected. I suspect all of this is probably due to the 2 GB limit on per-process memory in 32-bit Windows.

Use the 64-bit version of Windows then?

Sure, it would work, but I can't reinstall this system now. And 1800 MB per VM is more than enough for my needs.

I was just trying to find out what's the maximum memory a VM can handle, since there is no mention of any memory limitations in the User Manual.