virtualbox.org

Hi all,

I tried to install the latest Windows 8.1 devbuild ("Blue" 9374) on my MacBook Pro (1.83GHz with 2Gb of RAM), and though install proceeded flawlessly, albeit slowly (it's actually slower than a regular Windows 8 install), when the time came to install guest additions, it started alright, but got nowhere fast: an error message stated they couldn't be installed, period.

Guest parameters are default set by VBox, i.e. 1Gb of RAM and 64Mb of video memory for the guest. One processor devoted to the guest, set at 100%.

Has anybody experienced that kind of issue with "Blue" as guest?

1GB RAM seems awefully short for Windows 8. I would recommend giving 2 GB first, see if it improves something.
Also attach as zip the VM log - see here

As far as I can tell you can't install the guest additions in 8.1. You get an error dialog stating the VirtualBox Guest additions can't be installed in this version of Windows. Besides that, there is no official public preview of 8.1 so all that is out there are "leaked" copies, so if they chose to, MS could pursue legal action against anyone trying to use it.

@noteirak: I agree 1Gb isn't much, but that's all I can spare on a 2006 MacBook Pro with only 2Gb of RAM available (non-expandable), but I've managed to install this 8.1 build on VMWare on my PC, with the same amount of RAM but a bigger vHDD, so maybe it leaves more space for paging, I don't know.

@loukingjr: I hear you, but as far as I can tell, the whole Web is talking about this build, even reputable websites, where you are nearly encouraged to download and install, legal or not. My two cents? This build was leaked by MS itself, and we're all beta-testers without knowing it.

One basic flaw that's commong to both VirtualBox and VMWare regarding Windows 8 (all versions) as guest: there's no mouse support to speak of for laptops. My Synaptics Touchpad doesn't scroll up or down, and you can pretty much forget multitouch...

You have to run the Setup in compatibility mode (for Windows 8 ), then it works fine..

alain95 wrote:You have to run the Setup in compatibility mode (for Windows 8 ), then it works fine..

Nope. I have Windows 8.1 build 9431, and even if I run it using compatibility mode, they don't work. Device manager says this for VirtualBox Device:

Windows cannot initialize the device driver for this hardware. (Code 37)

{Unable to Load Device Driver}
%hs device driver could not be loaded.
Error Status was 0x%x

This is on a clean install of 8.1.

the WDDM driver doesn't work.

The guest additions do not work on Windows 8.1 and will fail until they are updated to incorporate 8.1. You can force the install by using compatibility mode but they still will not work and the 8.1 guests system event will report the failure.

Typically working builds are not available until closer to release or after of the guests OS due to the constant flux of the guests code.

personally I don't care for Windows 8 or 8.1 so I'm in no rush to see the GAs working.