Trying to install guest OS from USB flash drive

[vaughtg]

Hi, I just discovered VirtualBox yesterday - so I'm what you'd call a n00b. I know it, I accept it and I'm willing to change it.

I have a Win7 Home Premium host, running VirtualBox 3.2.12. I have created a couple of Linux systems, successfully, using CDs. But I'd rather not have to keep burning CDs to find out if an OS is what I want it to be. Most of the distros that I'm wanting to try out have a USB installation procedure. My hardware offers my USB flash drive as a boot device. The only issue I'm running into is that VB doesn't recognize this type of device as a bootable medium. Is there something here that I'm missing, or am I just out of luck on trying to install from my geek stick?

My host system is 64-bit, has 4GB of RAM, over 200GB free HD space and a dual-core 2.3GHz Intel T4500 processor.

The guest I'm trying to install is Ubuntu 10.10 Server (if that matters in this case) from a Toshiba 2GB USB drive.

Thanks,
G

[Martin]

Vbox doesn't support booting from USB. But you don't need to burn the CDs to install an OS, you can just attach the ISO files instead.

[vaughtg]

Okay, I've done a quick run-through of the controller and can't find where to attach the ISO file. Any suggestions? When I try to start the VM, it errors out and says there's no bootable media available.

- G

[vaughtg]

K. I just deleted the VM and created a new one and attempted to tie the ISO file to it - no luck. Apparently the VM is 32-bit, even though I'm on a 64-bit machine.

Thanks for your suggestion. It helped me get what I was looking for - I think.

[ChipMcK]

How did you attach the CD/DVD to the vm?
The ISO is attached the same.

[alptheadmin]

Vbox doesn't support booting from USB. But you don't need to burn the CDs to install an OS, you can just attach the ISO files instead.

I just have done what you said, and here i am installing a virtual win7 64 bit... thanks
btw don t buy asus laptop some of them have issues with their dvd room on win8....