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I'm not sure for the cores - I'v read that only one is allocated, but this is not making sense with what I experienced where I had to "downgrade" the processor type in my XP (to acpi ONLY, not multiprocessor ACPI) so that, when it was virtualized it would not try to activate both cores - that was making my VM under linux host consume 40% of CPU while totally idle

Philippe44: Thank you so much! I have a completely working system now. I think the mouse capture problem might have been something besides USB -- I should have realized that earlier because the keyboard was working fine inside the VM and that's USB too. Anyway, using the troubleshooting guide I added inside my /etc/init.d/mountkernfs.sh

Code: Select all

        # Added by WFD 20080801: devgid=85,devmode=664 below in
        # compliance with virtualbox troubleshooting guide.
        if [ -d /proc/bus/usb ]
        then
                domount usbfs usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs -onodev,noexec,nosuid,devgid=119,devmode=664
        fi

Also, I ran the guest additions, which might have been the trick.

I am just AMAZED how good this software is. I spent a ton of time with vmware and never got this config (linux host, winxp guest on native disk partition) to work. Thanks and kudos to the developers!

William, its good to read a success story like this unfold. I believe that the main challenge that we have is that a lot of people decide to try virtualisation without understanding that it is still quite a complex option. They expect it all to work out-of-the-box without reading the documentation or working the issues.

OK, so after many fruitless attempts to get my existing system to boot under vb and a months-long search for my windows xp cd, I did a repair install under virtualbox and now I have a fully-working system under VB, with a hardware profile. Unfortunately, it now doesn't boot natively - I select the native hardware profile, then it just reboots straight away. I tried again and it came up with the message that windows couldn't boot last time, so I tried safe mode and it just rebooted again, in the same place. I think the repair install was the whole system, not just the VB hardware profile. Anyone have any ideas on what I could do?

This is strange ... sorry to ask the same question, but how is the IO APIC configured in VB ? If it is not enabled, then the native XP will not boot properly as your system probably has an APIC (I experienced that).

As far as I know, the repair is the whole system (it erases the HW profiles too)

ACPI, IO ACPI and PAE/NX are enabled, while AMD-v is not, as I had problems with the guest booting with it turned on.

Screenshot:

My computer has 1 GB RAM, 512MB GFX memory, Athlon dual core 64-bit processor.

And the profiles weren't erased, because it still prompts for them.
One thing: when I did the repair, booting from the CD I think did the whole system. Then after the first reboot, I went through and chose virtualised before the config screen appeared. Then I did the setting up windows mularkey, then it booted up. I wonder, were the settings for the native profile erased? I'm going to try creating another profile that's the same as the virtualised one (which now works) and try booting that natively.

Nope, didn't work. I now officially have no idea. Can anyone help me?

Before you tried to boot your 2nd h/w profile natively, did you boot it via VirtualBox first and uninstall all VB related drivers via Device Manager?

As VT says, you can get dual boot working with two profiles. The driver chains for the two are different reflecting the two separate hardware profiles of the bare machine and the virtual machine.

What I haven't got working is using the DMI setting to avoid XP reactivation

I've got it now - I think the repair install did it. What happened was that afterwards I forgot to run MergeIDE again; it boots natively and as a guest now. Thanks for all your help.

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[Solved] Dual-boot AND Guest?