Almost Win8 OEM DVD onto VBox over OS X

[slowrunner]

I'm giving up on creating a Win8.1_64 VM in VirtualBox, but will leave a trail for others to know what worked and didn't.

Started with:
Windows 8.1 64bit OEM DVD ($84 discounted $15 with free shipping from Newegg.com)
VirtualBox 4.3.16 installed on Mac Mini (Late 2012 2.6GHz Core i7 16GB memory) running OS X 10.9.5

Summary: Failed with the following attempts:
1. DVD->ISO, Install from ISO: "No bootable media found"
2. DVD->USB Drive (via bootcamp assistant)->usbdrive.vmdk: Displays Win8 first install screen, then VBox Critical Error[/list]

Decision: I read that creating Bootcamp partition/install, and then making VM from the Bootcamp image may work.
Since the install with Fusion went fast and flawless, and the Ubuntu 14.04 Geekbench3 Fusion performance is 11% better than on VirtualBox,
I'm going to pay the $70 for Fusion and stop playing with installs.

Code: Select all

Detail Steps Tried:

1.  create bootable USB flash drive from DVD  
    a. insert DVD
    b. DiskUtility: select DVD
    c. File->New->Disk Image From “xxxxx” (the DVD)
       Browse to where you want it, enter short name, Image Format: DVD/CD master
    d. Terminal - cd to folder with the .cdr (ls /Volumes, cd /Volumes/Ext2T_P3 , cd Win*)
    e. hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o Win8p1.iso Win8DVD.cdr
    f. disconnect DVD drive! (for bootcamp assistant to offer USB drive option)
    g. open bootcamp assistant, select only make bootable USB flash 
    h. point to Win8p1.iso and continue
    i. Terminal: diskutil list, find Identifier (disk4 and disk4s1)
                 diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4
                 whoami  (<user>)      
		 sudo chown <user> /dev/disk4*
		 ls -al /dev/disk*
 		VboxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /Users/<user>/temp/usbdrive.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk4
                 ls -al /dev/disk* (make sure disk4 and disk4s are owner <user>

2.  VBox New VM
    Name: Windows 8
    Type: Microsoft Windows
    Version: Windows 8 (64bit)
    Next

3.  MemorySize: Default is fine, more is better used: 8192 , Next

4.  Hard Drive: Default “Create a virtual hard drive now”->Create
 
5.  Type: VDI->Continue

6.  Location and Size: (browse to ~/VirtualBox VMs/Windows 8/ name Win8_64_VirtHD
    /Users/<user>/VirtualBox VMs/Windows 8/Win8_64_VirtHD.vdi
    Create
    (Takes a while)

7.   Select the Windows8 VM, Settings->System->MotherBoard: Enable EFI, (w/wo Enable EFI)
 	Processor: 4, Enable PAE/NX,
	OK

8.   (Try just the ISO: Click Start: Virtual Optical Disk Popup: Browse to iso file, Open, OK
       Start: “no bootable medium found!”)

9.   Windows8 VM, Settings->Storage->SATA Controller->+(Add HardDisk)->Existing:
     choose usbdrive.vmdk: “Failed to open, Could not open medium, VERR_RESOURCE_BUSY”
     (tried chmod 666 on dev4* and vmdk...)
     or when success: Start, Win8 first install screen displays, 
     then “VBox Critical Error”

[socratis]

I'm giving up on creating a Win8.1_64 VM in VirtualBox, but will leave a trail for others to know what worked and didn't.

Well, if you want to leave a trail, let's make sure that it doesn't contain any misleading information.

• Steps 1a-1c are correct. After that, steps 1d-1i, not only are not necessary, they are wrong for what you want to do.
• Steps 2-6 are correct. Basic guide to creating a new VM 101, except maybe the RAM and CPUs that you assign. Not everyone has a spare 8 GB of RAM to assign to their guest.
• Step 7 is wrong. You don't need to enable EFI. In fact, you shouldn't. EFI boot is there mainly for Mac VMs and it may be buggy for other guests.
• Step 8 fails because of steps 1d onwards. You should have pointed VBox to the DVD/CD master from step 1c.

Booting from a bootable USB is tricky. Unfortunately you don't describe the steps that you took in enough detail to be able to pinpoint where the wrong turn was, but, I've only managed to do it a couple of times and it is not trivial.

In summary, for an install from a DVD/CD:

1. Create a DVD/CD image from your DVD. Do not worry about the .cdr extension.
2. Create a new VM. Accept the defaults. Point it to the .cdr from step 1.
3. There is no step 3.

For an install from a bootable USB: it's tough and you really have to know what you're doing. A relevant search in the forums reveals exactly that degree of difficulty.

[mpack]

[*]Step 7 is wrong. You don't need to enable EFI. In fact, you shouldn't. EFI boot is there mainly for Mac VMs and it may be buggy for other guests.

More than that, EFI is known not to work for Windows guests. The user manual even says so. EFI supposedly works with Linux guests, but it's an unnecessary complication hence not recommended.