Installing Win8.1

[AngusM]

I have a Windows 8.1 disc and I'm unable to install it. At first, it said it wanted PAE, so I enabled that, but now that I have, as soon as the install boots it says:

Your PC needs to restart.
Please hold down the power button.
Error Code: 0x0000000A
Parameters:
0xFFFFFFE6
0x0000001F
0x00000000
0x81D16DFB

And then a Guru mediates.
I have it set for:

• 4096Mb of memory (but I don't quite need that much, do I?)
• Chipset PIIX3
• All extended features off, except PAE/NX
• 1 CPU
• Execution cap @ 100%

The host is Ubuntu 14.04.4 AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor and 8Gb of RAM.
Of course, I'm running the latest VB: 5.0.16 r105871 and the accompanying guest addition (but I guess that doesn't kick in during install).

I'll bet you thought I wasn't going to post the log...

[Martin]

00:00:00.517455 Guest OS type: 'WindowsXP'
00:00:00.523175 WARNING! 64-bit guest type selected but the host CPU does NOT support HW virtualization.

Something doesn't look right here. Did you select "Windows 8.1 (64-bit)" correctly as guest OS type?
You shouldn't need to manually change a setting like PAE when the correct guest OS type is chosen.

[AngusM]

Oh, right, I forgot about that setting.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to recognize 64-bit. The combo box only offers 32-bit OSes. Booting w/Win8.1 32-bit failed just like before.

Thing is, I have a 32-bit XP installed here and I was hoping to upgrade it. How should I go about this? BTW, I tried it w/out PAE and it gave me the same error.

[mpack]

00:00:00.523175 WARNING! 64-bit guest type selected but the host CPU does NOT support HW virtualization.

If that is true then you can't install Windows 8.x or later as a VirtualBox VM on this host. Nor any 64bit guest. You should check with your PC manufacturer whether AMD-v is actually supported (you have an AMD Opteron 2384 quad core CPU), and if so how to enable AMD-v in the BIOS.

[AngusM]

I didn't find anything called "AMD-v" or any such thing anywhere near that, but I did find "Secure Virtual Machine" or something like that, in the BIOS settings--so I set that. And then VB let me set my OS as 64-bit. When I started the install again, I didn't get some warning by VB that I was getting before (which may have been about AMD-v), and it didn't block me like before, so I guess that one mundane setting fixed it.
But when I tried to install, I asked to upgrade and it told me to restart into my current system and install from the install disk. When I did, it told me that setup.exe isn't a Win32 application, which doesn't come as a surprise, since it's not 32-bit, but my current OS is. I'm going to have to do a clean install, aren't I?

[BillG]

You cannot upgrade a 32-bit system to 64-bit. That is how Windows works, not a VirtualBox problem.

Delete the vm you created and start again. Select Windows 8.1 (64bit) , create a new virtual hard drive, assign the ISO to the virtual optical drive and boot the vm.

[AngusM]

Oops! Looks like I double screwed up here, which should have worked out for me, but didn't. The Win8.1 I have is 32-bit. So I changed the selected OS to 32-bit, but it still doesn't work. When I try running the setup from XP (which the install tells me to do, to do the upgrade) it says "The procedure entry point __CxxFrameHandler3 could not be located" and "the file 'autorun.dll' could not be loaded...". I've tried the selected OS as WinXP and Win8.1. It doesn't make a difference. Also w/and w/out PAE in case that has something to do w/it.
Wanna see my log again?

[mpack]

Windows 8.x requires VT-x/AMD-v. Even the 32bit versions.

Please see my previous answer.

[AngusM]

And it has it now. See my log.

[mpack]

I assumed the last log was out of date (and didn't look any further) since it still shows you using the wrong template for a Windows 8.1 VM, despite the information you've already been given. An XP template can never work for Windows 8.1: the latter requires more CPU features than XP. XP can tolerate the presence of those features (it doesn't look for them), but 8.1 will not tolerate their absence.

[AngusM]

I've tried it with the OS set to both XP and 8.1 (32-bit). It makes no difference.

[mpack]

If it made no difference then the feature wouldn't be provided. The fact remains that you have yet to provide a log that shows a valid configuration.

[AngusM]

How do provide one? The only log I know of is by right-clicking on the VM in the manager and selected "Show Log".

[BillG]

I have it set for:

• 4096Mb of memory (but I don't quite need that much, do I?)
• Chipset PIIX3
• All extended features off, except PAE/NX
• 1 CPU
• Execution cap @ 100%

The host is Ubuntu 14.04.4 AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor and 8Gb of RAM.
Of course, I'm running the latest VB: 5.0.16 r105871 and the accompanying guest addition (but I guess that doesn't kick in during install).

I'll bet you thought I wasn't going to post the log...

You do not install the guest additions until you have installed a guest OS. If there was no OS installed, I suspect that trying to run the guest additions ISO did nothing. You will need to do it again after you install an OS. The guest additions modify the installed OS so that it runs better in a vm.

Windows 8.1 runs happily with 2G of memory.

[AngusM]

Thanks, but I've moved on from there. Now I'm in a situation the install program insists that I perform the upgrade from the old system. The problem is when I run the upgrade from the old system, I get these weird errors suggesting serious incompatibility.