Windows 7 to Windows 10 Upgrade

[Old Newbie]

Running Virtual Box 4.3.30 r101610 with GA on a Windows 8.1.1 host.

Installed Win 7 Ultimate x64 as a Guest using an OS setting of Windows 7 (64-bit). Of course, when I attempted to upgrade the guest machine to Windows 10, I received the dreaded message that Compare Exchange128 wasn't supported.

Shut down the guest, changed the OS type to Windows 8.1 64-bit, started the guest and tried the update again. Upgrade failed again with the same message that CompareExchange128 was not supported by the processor.

To test this upgrade scenario, does one need to install Win 7 using an OS type of Win 8.1 first, or is something else going on? I thought changing the OS type would fix the problem, but apparently not

O.N.

[mpack]

Did you actually shut down the guest, or only suspend it?

And why use the Win 8.1 settings? If you are installing Win10, why not use the provided "Win10 (64bit)" template?

[Old Newbie]

As my handle, Old Newbie, indicates sometimes an old mind forgets, but in this case, I think I did shut the guest down.

Last night when I received the message, the old brain remembered that it had received the same message when it first tried to instal Windows 8.1 into a Guest machine. I just figured setting the OS type to Windows 8.1 64-bit would do the trick. I shut everything down and turned off the computer.

This morning, before starting Virtual Box, I set the OS type of Windows 8.1 and tried the upgrade again. Got the CompareExchange128 error and wrote my post. Now the old brain still thinks he shut down the Guest completely under this scenario as Old Brain does not even know how to suspend a guest machine. I could learn something if someone were to tell me how to do it.

Since Virtual Box is not running now, I will try this again, this time using the Windows 10 64-bit OS type and will report back.

Thanks for the reply.

O.N.

[Old Newbie]

Changing the OS type to Windows 10 64-bit did indeed allow the upgrade to take place.

However, following this exact process on VB 5.0.0 on a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit host, running a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit guest, the upgrade reports Windows 10 can't be installed because of Insufficient RAM, and an unsupported processor. Guest OS setting are Windows 10 64-bit and 3096 GB of memory. Host processor is an Intel i7 850.

Seems like it should work.

EDIT: Went back to the older box running VB 5.0.0, stated the VM again and with the changed OS settings, and this time the upgrade worked. Must be an MS thing with their servers. At least that's what I'm thinking now.

O.N.

[the babbler]

Thanks Old Newbie,

I used your suggestions to upgrade a guest VM from Windows 7 Pro 32-bit to Windows 10 Pro 32-bit.

Host Platform:
Virtual Box 4.3.30 r101610 on a Windows 10 Home 64-bit host.

Guest Platform:
Windows 7 Pro 32-bit

Issue:
The "Get Windows 10" app displayed the message "The CPU isn't supported."
Downloaded and ran the Microsoft Windows 10 Media Creation Tool (32-bit version). The tool displayed the message "You can't install Windows 10 because your processor doesn't support NX".

Solution:
Used VirtualBox Manager to:
a) change the OS type from Windows 7 32-bit to Windows 10 32-bit.
b) enable the PAE/NX extended feature under System, Processor.
Re-ran the Microsoft Windows 10 Media Creation Tool.

T.B.

[kwolf22]

Having trouble with the upgrade from Windows 7 Pro 64-bit to Windows 10 64-bit.

In my situation, I'm getting the "CPU Not Supported" error. From what I've read, for Windows 10 support, the CPU must have support for PAE, SSE2, and NX. Which my host CPU does support. In fact, when I run

Code: Select all

grep flags /proc/cpuinfo

on my Ubuntu 15.04 64-bit client, I get:

Code: Select all

fpu vme de pse tsc msr *pae* mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse *sse2* ht syscall *nx* lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl pni ssse3 sse4_1 hypervisor lahf_lm

However, when I run the same command (via cygwin) on the Windows 7 Pro client, I get:

Code: Select all

fpu vme de pse tsc msr *pae* mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse *sse2* ht pni ssse3 sse4_1 hypervisor half_lm

Note the lack of NX.

For the record, my host system is a Mac Pro 3,1 - and I'm running VirtualBox 5.0.0 r101573 - and I have PAE/NX enabled.
The VB Log file for the Win7 client states:

00:00:03.482185 CPUM: SetGuestCpuIdFeature: Enabled NX

then later in the CPU Ext Features:

00:00:03.482924 NX - No-Execute/Execute-Disable = 1 (1)

I don't see any errors being logged, so it seems like the NX feature is being enabled, but Windows just isn't seeing it...

I've tried changing the template from Windows 7 (64-bit) to Windows 10 (64-bit) with no luck. I even tried booting the Windows 7 client using the Ubuntu (64-bit) template - since my Ubuntu client sees NX - still no luck.

Any ideas why this might be happening? Why on the same host system, the Ubuntu client is seeing NX, but the Windows client is not?

Thanks.