Boot an existing Vista/Windows 7 (Physical HD) install with VirtualBox

[hgurol]

Hey Azazel,

Did you manage to have any progress with this?

Thanks...

This how-to does not work with grub2. grub2 doesnt have a stage2-eltorito file.

It is possible to revert from grub(1.97~beta4) to grub(0.97) to be compatible with this post, but this seems counter productive.

To learn about Grub2 and also how to revert to legacy grub go here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1195275
Section 12 discusses reverting

For everyone else who does not want to revert (such as myself) we need a real solution rather than a workaround. I've been working with making an iso file of Grub2 and editing /boot/grub/grub.cfg but I haven't got a working configuration yet.

I keep getting errors such as "no kernel" and "cannot get C/H/S values" after trying to boot from a Grub2 entry.

I'm not exactly sure how the drive device naming works inside the virtual machine.

Any advice?

[hgurol]

You lazy Azazel, where did you get lost

Take a look at my post over here. I believe it will make you happy...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...&postcount=472

[travisc94]

Here is a fix to this, which works for me.

Running Ubuntu 10.04 and Virtualbox

http://www.in-the-attic.co.uk/2010/0...u-virtual-box/

[raivo]

Has anyone got it working with SATA drives?

[asndo]

canabal, did you ever fix the issue of repeated activations during login for Vista? I still haven't virtualized my vista and Jaunty partitions yet.

Hi, I would like also to take advantage of booting win7 both through a dual boot and virtual box. I was wondering on the problem of these activations and an idea came upon me: wouldn't it be better to install them independently and then rsync the appropriate files regularly so that just one installation of a given software would be sufficient?
Does someone know which folders apart from Program Files and Users in Win should be synchronized? Or rather which shouldn't because they contain hardware-specific files that would raise conflict between the systems?

[newboyo]

Flabbergasted wrote -

Quote:
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the problem. To fix the problem:

1. Insert your windows installation disc and restart your computer.
2. Choose your language settings and then click next.
3. Click "Repair your computer."

If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

Status 0xc000000f

Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.
My choices at the bottom are then "ENTER=continue" or "ESC=Exit".



I too am stuck at the same point. could someone please help.

Rgds

New

[XGaSt]

About activation issue, try to use WAT Remover in windows 7 with natively boot

[parminides]

There's a lot of chatter in this thread about it not being valid for grub2. However, I found some tutorials that seem to get around that problem.

I'm trying the method of http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtop...t=8458&start=0, which is more involved.

In step 4, I was able to run FixMbr in recovery mode, which wiped out grub as expected.

After that it says to

dd if=/dev/sda of=location/file.mbr bs=512 count=1

I don't see where the mbr that FixMbr created is indicated. The "if" part of the command is supposed to be the input file and "of" is supposed to be the output file. There's no input mbr "file" or location specified. The "input" file seems to be the entire disk. How does dd know to "Get the MBR to file" from the above command?

Of course, all these questions would be academic and I'd gladly continue to live in ignorance if I had actually been able to get it to work. So I'd appreciate some education.

[Syed75]

Err2Err3

I can't find a resolution..

[safira218]

Updated to add GRUB boot CD.

Can somebody please confirm that once I set this up I won't have to continually re-activate Vista each time I boot it either natively or virtually? I intend to be able to boot it alternately virtually and natively continuously forever. Does that make sense? Does it somehow retain the previous hardware profile or how does that work since I keep reading Vista doesn't allow for multiple hardware profiles...?