virtualbox.org

hi everyone in the forum,
i have been working for a couple of weeks on a company project which consists on cretaing a vbox running under windows with several applications we used here. The reason of this vbox is just to avoid the tedious installation ot alls programs and the time it takes.
once the vdi has been created, i have tryed to copy it to a dvd to make it kind of "portable" and in case it had worked, several dvds would have been burned to be able to use them on a course BUT when i tryed to load it from the DVD an error occur:

failed to open image "E:\prueba.vid" for writing due to wrong permissions (VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY)
failed to attach driver beoly us! Image is read-only (VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY)
PIIX3 cannot attach drive to the Primary Maste (VERR_VD_IMAGE_READ_ONLY)

Código Resultado:
E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Componente:
Console
Interfaz:
IConsole {db7ab4ca-2a3f-4183-9243-c1208da92392}

so anyone has face the same problem and know hos to solve it? does it have any solution, i mean, is there anyway to burn a vdi and "execute it" on another computer with te vbox installed? if not which solutions are the best to study and implement?
thanks in advanced

Think of the VDI as a real harddrive. Just like a real hardrive, if you make it read-only (the DVD is, so any file on it is) there is simply no way an OS will be able to run.
It NEEDS to be able to write to its disks. Exceptions are live cd OS which are prepared for this and use RAM as a "write" disk.
In any case, what you are trying to do will simply not work.

There are other ways to make this work but will require some work :
1. use external HDD and make the image immutable
2. push the VM folder to the computers who require it, via Entreprise tools like Active Directory, GPO, scripts, and the likes.

Overall, this is quite some work you're trying to do. Be sure you understand that this is like deploying an application with settings to your computers, taking into account that the "settings" are GB files.

thanks for the reply, i was fearing it...
i was thinking on usb drivers instead of hdd, and in creating some kind of "windows portable" like the one in hirens boot
but the option vbox was the best cause all ths programs would be used on a course, so i can configure one vdi image and thats all.

Well I am sure they are ways to make this work fairly easily, but you would need to create some custom stuff.

You talk about specific applications that would be installed already and won't change, why not going down the Windows 2kX Terminal Services way? Seems to me like Virtualbox is not necessarly the best tool for this.

If you want to keep it as a machine for each of your users, nothing stops you to have a local copy of the VM with the disks marked as immutable, onto which your users would start, and any changes would be lost upon poweroff/powerup of the VM.
You could also sync the VM folder from the network every night or something if you notice a change in the files (user trying to temper with).

A bit more background on what you need and trying to achieve could help. Virtualbox is only a mean to an end. If you could explain more about the end, we could give you a better advice.

thanks again, your help is really apprecciate.
Then let me provide you some background of the project:
we are located in madrid and sometimes we have to teach/show how to use several applications to our partners through spain.
what it was done before, is just travelling a couple of days before to the location, e.g., Malaga, and we installed all aplications required during the lessons/tutorials. Afterthat all pragrams are unistalled (why???? easy compay policies)
The installation of everyting takes really a lot of time (almost 45 minutes per computer multiplied by 20-30 computers), so first goal avoid this waste of time
Afterthat and nowadays we are facing that customers have differents SO (mainly XP, but it begin to be a lot of win 7) with its compatibility issue, second goal.

the solutions i was analyzing were:
1.- VBOX: because i can build a vdi copy it on a usb/hdd, then install the Vbox on ecah computer, and copy the vdi and woalaaa
2.- Mini WIndows: trying to emulate the mini windows included in hirens boot cd, problem adapt the aplications.

Now i am stuck with the vbox and the problem i related before, so any help is more than welcome
thanks in advanced

Virtualbox is definitly the good tool then. If I was to do this, I would personally use an external hard drive to store the VM folder and carry it around.
Then simply install VBox on the machine you want to run it on, copy the Machine folder locally, add the machine, and you're good!

You can even script the vbox install + vm copy + vm add + vm launch. So you would just plug the hard drive and everything would be ready for you.

If you even want to go further, you could try to see if PortableApps can be used with Virtualbox, and then you would have a completely "plug & play" setup.