Windows 7 on different host fails

[ksadil]

Hi,

I installed windows 7 as a guest on an Ubuntu AMD64 host. For disaster recovery, I would like to be able to bring up a copy of the guest on another machine, but my other pc's are all intel based. When I try to export an appliance and boot on another host, the Windows 7 guest just perpetually restarts. Is there anything I can do to run the guest elsewhere? Do I have to buy another AMD64 physical box to have any success?

Thanks,
Kim

[Sasquatch]

You shouldn't have issues with that. I can start my own W7 VM just fine on my laptop which is Intel based while my main PC is AMD based. However, I do share the complete VB configuration on the PC with the laptop. So if you have just this one VM, or you want to have a complete replicate of the current VB environment, you can just copy the entire .VirtualBox folder to the other Host system(s). Of course, they need to run the same Host OS type (Windows to Windows, Linux to Linux Host).
I'm guessing one of the vital settings is not in the OVF export. So you can also just compare the settings. Do make sure the VM UUID is the same on both systems to prevent W7 from asking for a reactivation.

[ksadil]

I suspected that it should work because my ubuntu guest happily works anywhere, while W7 won't complete a restart on the intel platform. I will try to copy the whole .VirtualBox directory over. Thanks for the reply

[ksadil]

hmmmmm...did not work, still restarts over and over.

[Perryg]

Make sure the settings all match exactly. Especially the IO APIC and CPU acceleration.
I have also seen that trying to run on different breeds of CPUs causes this. Intel needs to be to Intel and AMD to AMD. It's a Windows thing. Linux seems to deal with it a lot better.

[ksadil]

There is no acceleration tab on the intel host????

[Perryg]

VT-x/AMD-v?
Well then it will not work. 64 bit guests requires one or the other.

[ksadil]

oh. ok