virtualbox.org

I'm a newbie, both here and to Virtualbox and virtual machines. I am not an IT guy. I am just a retired American living in France.

I've got a very old version of Paradox (4.0) that I want to install in my new desktop computer that is running Windows 7 Family Premium edition as the host OS. The new machine was assembled by a boutique assembler in France from components. I had asked for Windows 7 Professional, but this is what I got. When I discovered that my version of Windows did not support XP-compatibility mode, the assembler installed Virtual Box and Windows XP Family Edition for me, with the intention that I would then be able to install Paradox in the XP virtual machine. Paradox 4.0 runs fine on my XP laptop, and I also installed it successfully on my wife's Vista laptop in the past.

I did get the installation of Paradox going using virtual Windows XP, the Install utility was copying files to the virtual C:\Pdox40 directory, but then it stopped at a certain point and said that it could not read a certain file. There were supposed to be options to abort or continue at that point, but I could not get those to work either. Now I am unable to initiate the install routine at all, the "Install.exe" of Paradox 4.0 will not run, and I get the following error message:

"Impossible d'ouvrir le CD/DVD virtuel D:\Paradox\INSTALL.EXE.
Could not get the storage format of the medium 'D:\Paradox\INSTALL.EXE' (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).
Code d'erreur : VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80BB0005)
Composant : Medium
Interface : IMedium {29989373-b111-4654-8493-2e1176cba890}
Fonction appelée : IVirtualBox {3b2f08eb-b810-4715-bee0-bb06b9880ad2}
Code retourné : VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)

It seems very odd that the install routine seemed to be running normally on my first attempt, until it stopped, but now I cannot get XP to run the file at all. I am hoping that there is some simple setting I need to change. The host system is 64-bit. I am assuming, but do not know, that the guest XP OS is 32-bit. I was thinking that maybe this is the problem. At one point I got a message about missing virtual machine 32-bit drivers for Windows XP that need to be installed.

Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated.

I assume that "family edition" is what is sold as "Home Edition" in English speaking markets.

It sounds to me as if you are doing it wrong. I.e. it sounds suspiciously like you are trying to mount the INSTALL.EXE file as a disk, which certainly will not work - you'll get exactly the error message you reported.

To install any software from a CD you have two options:

1. Use the "Storage" settings of the VM to associate the VMs virtual CD drive with a physical host drive. Then put the install CD in that host drive.
2. (Preferred). Make an image of the CD to a file using a tool such as ImgBurn. This image file is referred to as an ISO file, named after the filesystem used on data CDs. Plus ".iso" is conventionally used as the extension part of the filename. Use the "Storage" settings of the VM to associate the VMs virtual CD drive with the ISO file. You can also mount the "CD" while the VM is running, using the Devices menu.

ISO files have many advantages: they are faster, quieter, and unaffected by dust, scratches and thumbprints. Also the host can't interfere with the access to the drive and confuse matters. Also you can keep a folder of useful ISOs handy and not have to look for them in desk drawers or shelves.

Mounting the virtual CD is usually enough to trigger autorun, which runs the install program on the CD.

Thank you very much for the prompt reply, although I cannot say that I really understand it.

This was all set up by the fellow who assembled the machine and then subsequently installed Virtualbox and XP within Virtualbox for me.

If I go to the "Storage" section either within XP Under VM or directly through VM (these are the same menus/screens), I see one IDE controller and three devices underneath it: (i) XP.vdi, the installation of XP, whose format is said to be "Normal" and which has a virtual size of 40Gb and a real size of 9.16Gb; (ii) the F:/ drive, the "host reader," the physical drive, which is associated with XP, and (iii) VBoxGuestAdditions.iso, which is "attached" to Windows XP and is a virtual drive of 57Mb located on a D:\drive. Something I do not understand is that the VBox Guest Additions files on this D drive all start an installation utility, they do not start a program but they would rather install a program, I guess for the creation of an iso file.

I installed Paradox 4.0 from my XP laptop onto an external hard drive without a problem. I was then able to use the Paradox database files on this external hard drive from within my installed version of XP on the VM. But, using the same installation CD, I cannot install Paradox successfully onto the virtual machine. The installation routine is interrupted by a read error and stops running. I guess it's possible that it has to do with the CD/DVD reader, but one of the things I’m wondering is whether the necessary 32-bit drivers have been installed in the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso.

Another anomaly is that Paradox will only recognize a French keyboard configuration within the VM version of Windows XP. So I am using Paradox database files on the external hard drive, the governing OS is the installed XP within the VM, there is a button for switching between English and French, but as soon as I try typing in Paradox, the button reverts to French and the keyboard configuration is French.

Now I have looked at a couple of youtube videos about Virtualbox and I have tried to read relevant sections of Oracle's documentation.

The XP on the VM is clearly working. I can use Paradox on an external hard drive. But I cannot install it on the virtual hard drive. What is wrong?

You are using a virtual PC, meaning a simulated PC. The simulated PC has a simulated CD drive which can get data either from a CD image file or from a host physical drive.

Currently your virtual CD drive has the "VBoxGuestAdditions.iso" file mounted, I guess because you installed the Guest Additions at some point and neglected to eject this virtual CD. Select this item in the VM storage settings panel then look to the right hand panel of the dialog. You will see a little icon which you click to select a different ISO file or host drive. You can select either the Paradox CD in a host drive, or you can create an ISO image of it as I described earlier. Note that VirtualBox itself does not provide the means to create ISO files. You would need to use a tool such as the freeware ImgBurn which I gave you a link for above.

I use Paradox 7, which is not much newer than Paradox 4 (I don't remember a version 5 or 6) and it has similar issues on modern machines.

Paradox will run well in a virtual machine, if you follow the instructions outlined by mpack. However, I could suggest another approach to your problem:

Paradox (at least version 7) will run under Windows 7 once you have it installed. The difficulty is the installation. The main problem seems to be that this routine cannot cope with large hard disks. (It seems that if there is a hard disk over about 1Gb, the routine looks at how much disk space it has, then discards the most significant bytes of the result, and thinks it has no room.) If you can lay your hands on a small USB memory stick (I have an old 250Mb one I use for this purpose) then (i) Set your TEMP and TMP environment variables to point to this stick, (ii) put the Paradox installation files on the stick and install from there, (iii) reset the environment variables to their original values, (iv) then reboot. For me, Paradox 7 works after this.

I must say, though, that although Paradox will run this way, it is a little unstable in Windows 7. (It occasionally crashes out and has to be restarted.) For me this is not enough to be a trouble, but it would depend on what you use it for. It might run better in a virtual machine on an older version of Windows.

Thanks so much for these replies, fellows. I really appreciate it.

The installation of Paradox keeps aborting within my virtual Windows XP, that's the problem. I guess I'll try the iso method first and see if that changes anything. If not, I'll try installing directly into Windows7 using a small memory stick.

But what about this? I inserted a disk of Microsoft Office 97 Professional from 2002 into the DVD/CD reader within the VM, so I am installing within XP. This is a fully licensed disk from Microsoft with a key. The installation menu for Office came up automatically in the VM when I inserted the disk into the drive. But I got several errors during the installation, although the installation did seem to complete more or less, I was only installing Excel in a Custom Install, but the VM was also hanging at the end of the installation routine, I had to shut the VM down manually. I have not done a lot of testing, but Excel is there on the VM's main virtual drive and can at least open files -- it seems to be working. But I would have thought that this installation should be Crystal-clean under XP, if the XP is working properly. If that installation doesn't work, it seems to me that there is something wrong with the configuration of the virtual machine, which, again, I did not install.

VM hanging while performing some tasks is typically lack of RAM for the guest.

I ran into snags with both recommended methods.

Method 1, the small flash memory stick for direct install of Paradox into Windows 7. I get a message that it's the wrong file type. I have Windows 7, 64-bit. This is one reason why I might have to install Paradox from within the XP Virtual Machine.

Method 2, using an iso file version of Paradox. I could not create the iso file in the host, Windows 7, because I got a message that the CD containing Paradox was composed of multiple sessions. The CD was created a few years ago from two distinct 3.5" floppies. However, I have very recently installed Paradox onto an external hard drive from an XP machine using this CD. In addition, I created an iso image file of the CD within the virtual machine using XP. The problem is that it is housed on the virtual hard drive, so I can't access it in the Storage options of VM. Is there a way to create the iso file within the VM but have it stored someplace so that I can run it?

When I was advised to create an iso file, I was not told whether to do this in the guest or the host, or where to store it. I now think that I was supposed to do it in the host so that it could be "mounted." The problem is, now I cannot create the iso file in the host. Why this was not a problem Under XP I have no idea.

I hope people will indulge my ignorance. This is all completely new to me, and I need to have a very clear set of instructions along the way,

When reporting error messages please be precise about the context and wording, otherwise anything we say about them is pure speculation.

You create the ISO image on the host, using the host CD drive, with the purpose of removing the need for the VM to access the host CD drive. However forget that since it's now clear that you don't need the CD at all. This CD is something you made yourself from the original floppies? In which case the CD itself is not important, just the files on it.

A multisession CD complicates things. I've always avoided those to maximize compatibility, so I don't have much recent experience. If the installer originally came on two floppies then there are a number of things you can try. One is to make two floppy images using the CD contents - to use these you'll need to add a floppy controller + drive to the VM recipe. Since it isn't really an install CD the installer obviously doesn't care what drive you run it from. So another probably simpler possibility is to copy the files off the CD and into a shared folder, bypassing the CD issue entirely. See shared folders in the user manual. I would then copy all the install files (from inside the VM) from the shared folder into a single temp folder on the VM desktop, and run it from there.

Thanks again, mpack.

But there is something very fundamental I'm not getting about guest-host relationships. If I go to the storage options in the VM configuration panel, and I click on either one of the CD icons, and then I try to access the System folders on the virtual C drive using the button you demonstrated to me graphically earlier, that whole drive is unavailable. When I choose the option for using a virtual file, e.g. an iso file, the drop-down menu defaults to the host folders and drives and there is no way to get to the virtual/noraml C drive. I have concluded from this that the iso image file you earlier suggested I create should be in the host, not in the guest. Is that right? But now that option does not work because I am unable to create the iso file in the 64-bit host.

There are shared folders in the guest, but not in the host, as far as I can tell. This is the way it was set up, presumably this is the way it normally is or the way it has to be, or both. So how would I get all the files from the Paradox CD into a shared folder in the guest? How do I this mechanically? Because if I understand your latest suggestion (and I may well not), in the end I'm going to try to run Paradox's install.exe file by finding it in a shared folder in this storage configuration panel in the VM, so that it would be executed by XP. But that panel seems to allow mounting of files only from the host. I have inferred that this is what "mounting" means, to load a file from the host into the guest.

The button I demonstrated graphically has to do with inserting new disks in the VM. You can't view the contents until you start up the VM. When a file browser pops up that is VirtualBox asking you to say what ISO it needs to mount - you are looking at the host filesystem, not the guest.

Shared folders, by definition, are accessible to both host and guest. Look in VM settings | Shared folders to see what shared folders have been set up, and read the manual as I've said.

I am pleased to report that I was ultimately able to install Paradox 4.0 in Virtual Box running XP using the multisession Paradox installation CD I had created from two 3.5" floppies a few years ago. I did not find the VIrtualbox manual at all helpful on the subject of shared folders. What did the trick for me was a Goggle search on "Windows 7 Host XP Guest." I found a post in a forum that described the procedure for sharing folders in approximately seven easy point-and-click steps. This is nowhere to be found in the manual. The manual implies, I believe, that one has to issue Windows commands at a command line in VirtualBox Manager in order to set up the shared folders. I also looked at several videos on youtube about sharing folders in VirtualBox, and none of them was really good. They all went too fast, none of them distinguished carefully between guest and host systems.

It would be helpful for novices like me if there were a repertoire of links that could be cited in this forum for the person who wants to do something simple. Not every user of VirtualBox is going to be a software developer. I just wanted to be able to run some legacy software on a Windows 7 Home Edition machine. I had asked for Windows 7 Professional, but that is not what I got. Anyway, it's working, I'm pleased. I probably need to switch to Access over the next few years.

You're welcome.

So I guess this last post is sarcastic, the "You're welcome."

I can't tell what your purpose is here. You were helpful, it's true, but you could have been much more helpful and less arrogant. I had to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do a very simple task. This is not because I'm an idiot.

"Read the manual" was not helpful, and the manual is not well-written, in my opinion. There is no intelligible example of the syntax of the Windows command language, for example, nor is it clear in the manual, as I have already said, that one does not need to issue any commands in order to create shared folders. If I'm wrong about that, you could just cite the place in the manual that proves me wrong. In any event, there is no reason that there cannot be a "Startup User's Guide" for people who are in my situation, they just want to run some legacy software on XP, they don't want to test or develop anything.

I don't know who you are, whether you are an Oracle employee or not, whether you are the/an author of the Virtualbox manual or not, but there is no reason that you should have adopted the tone you did with me.

In fact for the life of me I can see nothing that can even be mistaken for arrogance about my posts before my last. But yes, my "you're welcome" comment was intended to be an ironic reminder that you were failing in the politeness department.