virtualbox.org

Hi all,

firstly please excuse my ignorance, i'm new to Mac and VirtualBox (in fact i'm new to Virtual Machines).

I have installed VirtualBox 4.1.8.
I have just started a new job and would like to put Windows 7 in a virtual machine. The company gave me a USB with the Windows 7 installation that they
have setup.

I was expecting an ISO image but the USB contains an Autorun.inf file (any many other files) which i assume installs Windows 7 with some presets made by the company.

The problem is how to i get VirtualBox to install Windows7 using these files?

A setup CD should be bootable CD/DVD or an ISO image of one. What you have sounds like a service pack, in which case it's useless until the base OS has been installed.

They told me it was the full Windows 7 installation, and the USB drive does have 6Gb of used storage. I just have no idea how to actually start the
installation from inside VirtualBox, or if it's even possible.

Not from inside VirtualBox. Well not easily anyway. VBox does not support booting from USB. If this is an actual install on USB I would think it should be able to be burned to a CD/DVD or converted to an ISO though. If not then search for booting usb in VirtualBox. I have seen it has worked for others just not supported.

Okay so i decided to take a chance and put the USB drive into my Windows machine, then changed the boot order and on startup it's installing Windows 7 (which i need to stop LOL).

Anyway this confirms that the drive does indeed have the Windows 7 Installation on it.

Would it be easier for me to somehow burn this onto a disc as an ISO? If yes what software do you guys recommend to do this? Or is there a way to create
a virtual disc with the ISO on it for VirtualBox to use?

I don't do much with Mac but it should have a CD/DVD burning software. All you really need to do is tell it to create an ISO (or what ever a Mac uses) image and use that. 6GB isn't going to fit on a CD/DVD

Bah can't seem to get this working.

Made an ISO image using Diskutil but when i try access the image from VirtualBox it just keeps telling me "No bootable medium found" Fatal Error.

The VM Boots on CD/DVD and in storage i have set the IDE Primary Master as the ISO image.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bundling the same set of files onto a CD is not what we mean by "making an ISO image". It's not just any old ISO that's needed, you need the ISO of a kosher bootable setup CD. If that exists at all in the files you have then it will be embedded somewhere in a self extracting executable.

However it remains the case: I fail to see the usefulness of an install program that can't be used until after the OS is installed! Unless of course it's actually (say) an XP->Win7 or Vista->Win7 upgrade tool. Look on the disk for a "readme" text, see what it says. If that's what it is then you'd need to install the appropriate earlier OS first, then upgrade.