VirtualBox w/ no hardware virtualization

[hammerhead1024]

Greetings,

I've never used Virtualbox and I want to install it. The system is a Dell XPS 9100 which has no hardware virtualization. According to the documentation it can be install using software virtualization. I'm a little hesitant about this. Is there anything I have to watch out for? Are there any known problems using a non-hardware virtualization box? It's running Windows XP.

Thanks

[BillG]

The only real limitation is that you will npt be able to install a 64-bit OS in a guest (since that requires hardware virtualization). VirtualBox runs fine on my Dell laptop which does not support hardware virtualization.

[hammerhead1024]

BillG, thanks for the reply. I'm planning on setting up only one guest running 32-bit Linux (CentOS) so it sounds like I won't have any problems.

[Sasquatch]

People have been running VMs without hardware assist for years, so there isn't much to look out for as Bill pointed out. You just don't have all features available. My PC doesn't have it either and it runs VMs just fine.

[hammerhead1024]

Thanks for the info sasquatch.

[hammerhead1024]

Well I installed it with no problem. I created the VM and installed CentOS again with no problems. I noticed that when the VM is running and nothing is being done the CPU is constantly 100%. Is this normal?

[Sasquatch]

It shouldn't do that. Maybe you have a background process inside the VM or some 3D effects or something going in the Guest.

[Perryg]

CentOS needs the divider=10 in the boot parms IIRC.

[hammerhead1024]

I saw that in the doc. and put it in /etc/grub.conf and rebooted.