virtualbox.org

I have a multi boot system I installed the latest version of virtual box on XP Pro SP3 and Fedora 12.
It is an AMD dual core 64 bit processor with 4GB of memory

Running Virtual Box on XP I installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. On Fedora I installed Fedora 14 X64.

The two vdi files (W7 and F14) reside on a different partition to the OS's and both are visible on both OS's.

Using Virtual box on Fedora I can start both virtual clients but the Windows 7 client says the hardware has changed and must be reactivated by telephone.

Using Virtual Box on XP Pro I can start the Windows 7 machine which is a 64 bit operating system, which recognises it has been activated, but not the Fedora14 machine. Trying to start Fedora14 I get a message saying the system is x64 and it can only find i686.

Questions are:-
Why will VBox start a Widows 64 bit operating system from a 32 bit Host OS but not a Linux 64 bit operating system.

Why does the Windows 7 client, when running on a Linux 64bit host think the hardware has changed from when the same client is running on a Windows 32bit host.

It is not the end of the world, but i am just curious as to why a virtual clients can behave differently on different hosts on the same physical machine.


Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

The Windows 7 activation mechanism is sensitive to a change in the UUID of the VM (note: the VM, not the hard disk), because VBox provides this as a default hardware signature to the guest. I assume that you created independant VMs on the two hosts, hence by doing so the second VM had a different UUID. Information on solving this problem can be found by searching the site (use google).

Thank you for your reply.

It was the same VDI file. It is independent only in as much as it is running in independent hosts.I created the Windows 7 vdi file with the machine booted into XP.

I created the Fedora 14 vdi file with the machine booted into Fedora 12. I created the Windows 7 client in Fedora 12 by pointing it to the W7 vdi file created in XP. Similarly I created the Fedora 14 client in XP by pointing it to the F14 vdi file created in Fedora 12.

If this means its independent then you can only use a Windows client in the OS it was created in otherwise you would need to reactivate every time you used it in another OS, or you have to have two independent instances.

Any idea why VBox running on 32 bit XP can run 64 bit W7 but not 64Bit Fedora 14.

32bit vs 64bit makes no difference to the problem, so I won't address that question (further).

I don't know why you assured me it was the same VDI file: that was clear from your original Q. What I said was that if you created a new VM around and existing VDI, which I assume you did, then the new VM has a new UUID and a Win7 guest is senstive to this. Have a read of the sticky discussion in the "Windows Guests" forum called "What changes cause reactivation in a Windows guest".

I have solved the problem with Windows 7. I had wrongly thought the UUID was specific to the .vdi file. I amended the UUID in the xml files and everything worked. For some reason VBoxManage was happy to list all the vms when run under Windows but in Fedora12 it didn't produce a list of vms although it would list ostypes.

Now I see from various post that people have successfully installed a 64bit linux systems on a 32bit windows host on a 64bit AMD cpu. In my case I have successfully installed Fedora14 X64 on Fedora12 x64 host but the vdi file won't run when using it to create a VM in a win xp 32bit host.

I have probably got one of the settings wrong.

Has anyone successfully managed to do this or is it necessary to create a vdi file on the windows Xp 32bit host in order to be able to run it.

Edit I have now solved the Fedora problem. I deleted the machine again and set it up again but this time I set the type to Fedora 64. Previously I had accepted the default Fedora as set by VirtualBox rather than dropping down the box and looking at the options .

It was my first foray into VirtualBox so maybe I should have been a bit more patient.

FSL wrote:I had wrongly thought the UUID was specific to the .vdi file.

Well, old news now, but for future reference... VDI files are indeed identified (in VBox) by an embedded UUID. But, so are VM xml files, and it was the VM UUID which was the source of your Win7 problem.