virtualbox.org

I am trying to upgrade windows xp to 7. I have an iMac intel core duo running OS 10.8.2. I have Virtual Box 4.2.10. In order to upgrade I have to go to custom install. It then tells me it cannot install on the c: drive as it has to install on a disk formatted NTFS. How do I do that on a virtual disk? What am I doing wrong? Please help.

I think you have XP with FAT32.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881/EN-US

Thank you. I reformatted the c: drive to ntfs but now have another problem. I have a 10G virtual drive and the install says I need 6352Mb free which I don't seem to have even though I have nothing on the drive except IE and chrome. I can't seem to find how to increase the virtual drive capacity. How can I do that. Thanks for the help.

Somehow I screwed the pooch. I wanted to start Windows to work on the size of the virtual hard drive and got this message:

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine Windows XP.

PIIX3 cannot attach drive to the Secondary Master (VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND).

Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component: Console
Interface: IConsole {db7ab4ca-2a3f-4183-9243-c1208da92392}

I don't think I did anything but copied the .ide to my desktop in case there was a problem. I now don't have any Windows program.

After Update from XP to Win8 you dont have old apps.

So best approach is a new start. Create a new XP guest with a hd with more than 100 GB size, then update to Win8.

Made new Windows xp machine, upgraded to Windows 7. I cannot connect to the internet. It will not let me connect just broadband but the only choice is dialup or pppoe which doesn't work. In settings, under Network, it lists attached to NAT, Adapter type PCnet-Fast III (Am79C973) At the bottom it says Non-optimal settings detected but does not give any suggestions. Can anyone help?

PCNet Fast III is a very old NIC. For Windows 7 I would use Intel Pro/1000 MT. Windows 7 should automatically load the driver.

Thank you to everyone. I have it working now. However, when I installed windows 7 it was an upgrade from xp so in settings, I originally selected windows xp. When I upgraded to 7, I changed the selection to Windows 7 and the note: Not-optimal settings detected. It appears on every page of the settings so I don't know what settings are non-optimal. Is there somewhere I can go to find the correct settings? I tried the manual and it is out of date and does not mention windows 7 and is too complex for me to understand. I appreciate all the help.

Normally this is an indication that you have given too many processors, or memory to the guest. There should be a color scale on both and if you have them in the red area that would be non-optimal. Other that that we would need to know the host resources and the guest settings.

Yes, that was it. When I upped the video memory into the green, the message went away. Thank you again.

Another hint: After update to Win7 you should change machine type in the VBOX guest settings to Win7.