virtualbox.org

System: VB 4.2.6 on a Vista-SP2 32-bit host with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor.

Problem: When I start creating a Windows 8 guest, I get errors:
With win8 64-bit: "Your PC doesn't have a 64-bit processor"
with win8 32-bit: "Your PC needs to restart"

On the same host, VMware 8 succeeded to create a Windows 8 64-bit guest easily.
I am quite new to VB and don't know what will do the trick. Thanks for your hints.

Ensure that:
- PAE/NX is enabled under the VM Settings into the System section, Processor tab
- VT-x/AMD-V is enabled under the Acceleration tab

If it still doesn't do the trick, please post the Guest Log file as decribed here

Thanks for reminding me of these settings. Actually, in VM Settings > System, the Acceleration tab is greyed out, so VT-x/AMD-V is not explicitly chosen.

I am aware that Windows 8 Enterprise expects VT-x/AMD-V. However, on the identical host, VMware 8 did not require to explicitly select its option "Intel VT-x or AMD-V". Instead, with the simple setting "Automatic", it somehow managed to create the Win8 vm.

Now, how could I get VB to succeed as well?

Could you attach as a zip the guest log file as explained here

Gladly done. Thanks in advance.

VBox.log wrote: 00:00:13.764257 ******************** End of CPUID dump **********************
00:00:13.858683 HWACCM: No VT-x or AMD-V CPU extension found. Reason VERR_SVM_NO_SVM

The log says that your CPU does not include hardware support for virtualization (VT-x/AMD-v). Without it you cannot run a Win8 VM in VirtualBox.

Thank you for inspection of the log file. So I will have to stick with VMware that miraculously does the trick

Nothing miraculous about it. VMWare is different software and therefore may have different features and requirements, upsides or downsides.