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I'm having a problem upgrading Windows 10 Pro 32 bit to Windows 10 Pro 64 bit in a VirtualBox VM on OS X Yosemite. The DVD drive is recognized and the bootable 64 bit disk is good. I tested it by using it to do a clean install in another VM.

But in the VM that contains the 32 bit version I can't boot from the DVD. Windows always boots from the virtual hard disk. When I set the startup settings so that the optical drive is the only boot device I get the message "FATAL: Could not read from the boot medium! System halted."

How can I get the 64 bit DVD to boot up in the VM that has the 32 bit version of Windows 10 installed? Thanks.

Thanks, loukingjr. That article helped me to set up the VM with all the required settings. It still didn't help with getting the VM to recognize the physical DVD drive. So I created a bootable flash drive but had no luck with that, either. But I finally was able to install the 64 bit version on top of the 32 bit version and not lose the activation.

First I created a virtual optical drive in the VM settings. I then clicked on Choose Disk and selected Files of Type RAW, then I navigated to Windows.iso in the OS X file system. Then I went to the System tab and set the boot order to Optical first and Hard Disk second. I turned off my physical DVD drive. When I booted with this configuration it booted from the virtual optical drive. Then I followed the remaining direction in the article you mentioned.

Make sure that you choose to do a new install, not an upgrade. Then when you are asked to enter a product code select Skip the first time and Later the second time (if I recall correctly). When you are done with the installation you will find that Windows is still activated.