question about XP guest install partition

[LMHmedchem]

Hello to the vbox forums.

I have a question that came up when attempting to install winXP 32-bit as a guest on an XP host. That may sound like an odd procedure, but I am trying to get the feel of vbox before I decide what my final setup is going to look like.

I set up a virtual machine and pointed to my xp installer iso. The iso was created with nlite and should have all the drivers it needs and such. The installer proceeded as expected, but when it got to the screen when you select the partition to install to, I was a bit confused about the information there. There was only one partition in the list of places to install XP, and it was listed as ~10MB in size. I wasn't sure where the data would be going to, so I aborted and decided to research a bit more. I assume that the install goes to the virtual disk that was created in the setup, but the disk I created was much larger than 10MB and 10MB wouldn't go very far for a windows install.

Am I doing something wrong in the setup here, or can I just point to the available partition and move on?

Also, I'm a bit unclear about how the networking works and how it should be configured. On my first try, my firewall (Comodo ISP) alerted me to the presence of a new network, and I ended up with svchost using 100% of my network adapter to do who know what. I don't know if it was pinging the LAN or what. Can someone point me to a writeup on how networking is configured for this kind of thing? To some extent, I don't really need the VM to have internet access, so it might me simplest to start with a setup where the VM doesn't have a connection.

I didn't see an installation forum, so I apologize if I put this in the wrong place.

LMHmedchem

[mpack]

Best guess is that you are not looking carefully enough at the virtual disk creation dialog seen during the VM creation wizard. Choose dynamic VDI, and make sure it's 32GB or thereabouts - be particularly careful to see that the dialog is saying GB and not MB.

[LMHmedchem]

Ah, so it is likely that I set up the virtual disk to be 10MB instead of 10GB? Is it really necessary to have a 32GB virtual disk for XP? I have used nlite to remove a great many components from XP that I don't use. I guess it makes sense to have a large virtual disk and then see how much of it gets used with the install.

Any suggestions regarding the network setup?

LMHmedchem

[mpack]

It's a dynamic disk image, so if XP doesn't need the 32GB, then the host file will not grow to that size. In the meantime I would not skimp. It's the working space you need to worry about - the Windows folder contents don't really take much space by modern standards, even on a setup that hasn't been nLited. E.g. last time I created a standard XP VM it took around 1.7GB, including the swap file.

Best network setup depends on what you want a network connection for. If all you want is basic internet browsing then NAT is the easiest to get going. Chapter 6 of the user manual has a discussion of the available network modes.

[LMHmedchem]

Thanks for the information. I set up the VM again with a 30GB dynamic disk and an in the process of installing XP from my iso.

Windows has started and I am in the screen where I am being asked to set up the network connection. I chose "LAN" and then "obtain IP automatically" and "obtain DNS automatically". The result of using these options is that windows thinks it doesn't have an internet connection. How do I determine the specific connection settings to use here?

I have a window open for my XP VM, but it is just a solid blue background and there is no evidence of a desktop as of yet. Neither mouse button has any effect. Did I do something wrong here, or do I just have to wait a while for things to load up? My task manager is still showing ~800MB of available RAM, so it doesn't seem as if there should be a resource issue. I am using allot of page file however.

LMHmedchem

[LMHmedchem]

Well I can shutdown the XP VM, and then start it up again. I get the windows login screen, which accepts my username and password, but then it just goes to a blue screen. It is not the BSOD blue screen, it just looks like windows explorer is not starting. Unless someone knows what is going on, I am going to assume that I putzed up something in the nlite of the OS. Has anyone else run into this kind of thing? I will try again with a new nlite version with less stripped out.

LMHmedchem

[LMHmedchem]

Well I have built the VM again from a less striped down nlite iso, but I am still getting the blue screen after I login. In the VM settings under storage, it lists the controller as IDE. All of my hard drives are running of of SATA controlers in AHCI mode. The AHCI driver was slip-streamed into the installer iso, so windows should have the driver it needs. Is there something else I need to set up for SATA in vbox? It seems as if windows would not have been able to install to the hard drive if it didn't have the drive it needed. For whatever reason, it does not look like windows explorer is able to start.

LMHmedchem

[mpack]

XP does not have native SATA support drivers, so the controllers should indeed be IDE. A VM runs on simulated hardware; the actual hardware used by your host (e.g. "my disks are SATA") is not relevant.

Btw. You use an nLited XP at your own risk - we can't support anything except standard distros.

[LMHmedchem]

Alright, it's good to know about the virtual hardware. Once reason I was using the nlite version is that it had the slip-stream AHCI drivers that I thought I needed to be using. I guess that's not an issue. I will try again just using my install CD and see if I can get this working. That should make things easier to troubleshoot. I have been putting all of the files for each VM (virtual drive file, snapshot folder, etc) in a dedicated partition on an SSD. Would it be better for now to leave all of that in the default locations?

LMHmedchem

[mpack]

I'm not altogether sure what you are asking... Are you making multiple VMs? However, in general yes, stick with defaults until you get more experience.

[LMHmedchem]

I will eventually be making multiple VMs, and I thought it made sense for performance reasons to put the associated files on an SSD. I set up a partition and some folders to contain everything, but this moves some of the vbox files from the default locations in Documents and Settings to the folders I set up. Doing something like that is usually not a problem, but when I am having issues, I tend to simplify.

I was able to get XP up and running by just using my install CD. I guess that means I need to work on my nlite a bit. I have a "shared" folder added to the VM, which is very important for what I need to do. I don't see that shared folder anywhere in windows explorer. I set it on "auto mount". There is something in the setup that says "this feature requires Guest Additions". Is there something else I need to install with vbox to get this working?

LMHmedchem

[mpack]

I will eventually be making multiple VMs, and I thought it made sense for performance reasons to put the associated files on an SSD

That could make sense, though only if the SSD is a decent size. If lack of host disk space inclines you to make the virtual disks too small then you could lose all the performance benefits to congestion. IME SDDs speed up the booting process (which I don't care about 'cause I'm off making coffee!), but with a decent sized disk cache you should hardly notice hdd lags in normal operation.

I.e. My way of saying that I've yet to be persuaded about the benefits of SSD.

[LMHmedchem]

I have found SSD to be generally helpful since SATA 6GB/s. The relatively small size drive is amenable for the use of device images. I have clonezilla device images of all of my system drives and it is very nice to be able to restore the OS in 5 minutes, or clone it to another rig. I do find it works nearly as well to just use a small partition on the outside of a platter drive, but it's really nice to be able to image the entire drive and get the MBR and grub backed up as well. When you have a half dozen or so OSs to boot into, you dread setting up grub again if something goes wrong.

I am still having trouble getting my shared folder to appear. I installed the vbox Extension_Pack-4.2.6-82870. There is something in the settings that says, use 'net use x:\\vboxsvr\share' to access a folder named share for DOS. I entered that command into a DOS terminal and I get "System error 67, the network name cannot be found". Am I going about this wrong, or do I still have something missing in my vbox install?

LMHmedchem

[mpack]

The extension pack has nothing to do with shared folders. For that you need to install the guest additions (inside the guest).

Extension pack == host plugin to extended the functionality of the VirtualBox application.
Guest Additions == Package of applets and device drivers for the guest that improve speed and integration with host (including simple shared folders).

[LMHmedchem]

Well thanks to your help I am making progress. I have a VM installed and have done a few things like windows update and installing cygwin. I went to install some software in my XP guest, but there is no CD drive listed under my computer. The CD seems to have been replaced by vbox additions. If I go to the virtual media manager and release the vboxadditions iso from the optical drive list, will I then be able to see a CD if I load one into my CD drive? It doesn't appear that you can make many changes to the VM settings once you have the VM installed. I guess you need to be careful to include everything you may want before you get going.

LMHmedchem