Run Vista under ubuntu with VirtualBox from hard disk

[harun3d]

Running vista with an existing vista .iso image file or dvd is possible and explained clearly on many internet sites.

But I don't have a vista .iso image file. I have a dual boot of vista and ubuntu on my hard disk. I can run both separately. I want to run vista without waiting to shut down ubuntu and starting up vista. Can't I run vista with virtualbox at the same time in ubuntu?

[TheFu]

The answer is "perhaps", but it won't be easy. Lots of people have wanted to use a physical machine OS installation and run that inside a virtual machine. Because the physical hardware on a PC and the virtual hardware _presented_ inside a virtual machine are different this isn't usually feasible.

However, there is an option to convert a "physical" install in to a "virtual" install using p2v tools. https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=p2v+virtualbox will show a few, but the trick is to find a tool that creates a virtual image compatible with your virtualization hypervisor, virtualbox.

I hope these leads are useful.

[jim_deadlock]

This link might be useful, although complicated:

How to migrate existing Windows installations to VirtualBox

With that said, if you have an original Vista installation DVD (not recovery) with the product code then it's a straightforward process to install it in Virtualbox, I've done it several times.

[harun3d]

It is really difficult.Or it asks too much time. I think that is the most important thing that ubuntu can do: an automatic parallel boot of windows. For accessing windows files, this is already done. It can be accessed directly. But it would be nice to run windows virtually in ubuntu with one click. I need windows for office documents. libre office (or open office also) is not fully compatible with windows office.

My computer is so much slow when I use windows comparing with ubuntu. I used computers of 4 cores and 8 threads 3ghz (core i7) in windows. They copy 100MB in 50sec. They are so slow in windows. they are slower than my 2core 2thread 1.7ghz in ubuntu.

[TheFu]

It is really difficult.Or it asks too much time. I think that is the most important thing that ubuntu can do: an automatic parallel boot of windows. For accessing windows files, this is already done. It can be accessed directly. But it would be nice to run windows virtually in ubuntu with one click. I need windows for office documents. libre office (or open office also) is not fully compatible with windows office.

My computer is so much slow when I use windows comparing with ubuntu. I used computers of 4 cores and 8 threads 3ghz (core i7) in windows. They copy 100MB in 50sec. They are so slow in windows. they are slower than my 2core 2thread 1.7ghz in ubuntu.

VirtualBox shouldn't be that slow inside a VM. Have you followed the best practices for network and storage setup?
* Preallocation of storage is mandatory. NEVER use sparse files.
* Always use virtIO drivers when possible.
* If you can't use the virtIO network drivers, use an Intel PRO/1000 virtual NIC regardless of your physical NIC.

Automating the startup of a virtualbox VM is trivial too. Just put vboxmanage with the correct arguments to startup the specific VM into a script. Drop that script into the auto-startup folder for your distro.

[Cheesemill]

I think that is the most important thing that ubuntu can do: an automatic parallel boot of windows

This isn't a Ubuntu problem, it's a Windows problem.

It's because Windows is so tightly linked to the actual hardware that it's installed on that attempting to boot it inside a VM causes all sorts of problems.

Perhaps if you ask Microsoft nicely enough they will come up with a solution for you

[harun3d]

VirtualBox shouldn't be that slow .

I had to precise it maybe. It is not in virtual box that I tested it. It was normal run of windows 8 on a core i7 and I was surprised that fastest processor (intel core i7=latest technology I think) which runs windows is much slower than a slow processor running ubuntu.

I mentioned this because this is the reason why I don't want to use windows in normal boot. I only want to use it in virtual boot with virtualbox to use it as less as possible due to its turtle speed.

[TheFu]

To make any OS desktop faster,
* turn down the graphics "cheese."
* Turn off 3D-effects, Aero, and all those fancy animations.

This applies to Linux and MS-Windows equally. Windows-Vista and later basically doubled the hardware requirements for a similar level of performance as WinXP. Linux-based OSes have always been lighter than MS-Windows, though Unity-Ubuntu is pushing more and more feature-bloat into their Unity desktop.

If you want the quickest Ubuntu desktop, don't use Unity. Use a raw window-manager like FVWM or a light-weight DE like LXDE instead. FVWM was the first WM that supported virtual desktops. I still use it from time to time. It is hard to explain how fast it actually is.

I run Windows7-Ultimate inside a KVM virtual machine to record TV shows. The KVM server doesn't even have a graphics card installed. It has power and a network cable, that's it. The GUI access into MS-Windows is only through RDP. Win7 will not show any TV videos. However, the HDD and network performance are at almost native levels. Moving 10-20GB TV recording files from that VM routinely gets 70-80MB/sec (560 Mbps). That proves that both HDD and networking for Windows7 can be pretty excellent. BTW, that's on a Core i5 CPU with 1.5GB RAM allocated to the Windows7 VM. I use virtio drivers.

None of this solves your issue. We need more facts about the problem to help.
Complete physical machine Specs
* RAM
* HDD - how much, how it is allocated, how it is connected
* Network - connection, cabling, card
* Video Adapter
Complete VM Specs
* RAM
* HDD - how much, how it is allocated, how it is connected, which controller chips
* Network - connection, cabling, virtual card

Do not allocate more RAM or CPUs to a VM than is necessary. If the hostOS is starving for either, every VM will be slow too. For a Windows desktop, no more than 2 vCPUs should be allocated. Always leave as least 1GB of RAM for the hostOS. These are rules of thumb.

We really would like to help. A few yrs ago I wrote an article about making WinXP 50% faster under virtualbox - http://blog.jdpfu.com/2010/06/22/vir...mance-improved. There are other tips there too.

Since that time, I've switched away from Virtualbox for Linux-hosted VMs to improve system stability. It wasn't stable on my hardware back then, whereas KVM has been rock solid on the identical hardware over a year. I mostly do server virtualization. For running a desktop within a desktop, I'd choose virtualbox. It is the better choice for graphical needs.

I look forward to seeing your setup in detail.

[harun3d]

Complete physical machine Specs
* RAM: 2GB SO-DIMM DDR2-667
* HDD - how much, how it is allocated, how it is connected: see picture below, not e-sata, 5400rpm
* Network - connection, cabling, card: cable connection
* Video Adapter: Intel GMA X3100 (shared video memory)
Complete VM Specs
* RAM: I gave 1gb for windows and 1 for ubuntu
* HDD - how much, how it is allocated, how it is connected, which controller chips: I gave 25 GB for vista in virtual box (in real hard disk it was 60GB for vista). I tried all possibilities in virtual box concerning type of install: install as virtual disk, virtual machine, parallel disk,... None of them were able to start my windows from hard disk or from windows installation cd
* Network - connection, cabling, virtual card: there was no option for network connection in virtual box I think

Running vista or xp from cd in virtualbox in ubuntu is also good for me, if running from hard disk would be difficult or impossible.

[Elfy]

Thread moved to Virtualization.