Comments on: Windows 7 and VirtualBox

By: Marc

Marc — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:41:04 +0000

New virtualbox version 2.1.4. is out with full win7 support, including additions. enjoy!

By: Julien

Julien — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:48:38 +0000

It freezes for me too at the “Starting Windows” screen. Interestingly enough, the less RAM I assign it, the further along it gets in the booting process.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:19:14 +0000

I\’m running VirtualBox 2.1 (non-ose) on Debain Sid/sidux and I installed guest additions via compatibility mode (Vista) but now Win7 doesn\’t boot anymore. It just freezes when you see \"Starting Windows\" with the logo above.

Anyone else having this problem?

By: eternicode

eternicode — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:38:27 +0000

Trish: Glad you were able to get it working

Krotow: Thanks for the specs. I ended up enabling “Hardware Graphics Support” (can’t remember exactly what it was called, but I hadn’t enabled it before) and cranking the video memory all the way up to 128MB for the guest, but still no go on the eyecandy.

I’m wondering if maybe it has to do with hard drive space — I just installed Win7 on my computer using 12GB of free space I had from an old XP install (I need a bigger HD, heh). The Win7 install took a healthy 10.7GB after the install, and the eyecandy works well.

If anyone has, say, the recommended 15GB of free space to spare for a VBox Win7 install, I’d like to know if the eyecandy works in that situation.

On the other hand, hardware graphics in VBox is an experimental feature, if I recall correctly, and it may not work under Linux hosts.

By: Trish

Trish — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:53:18 +0000

An update! reinstalled Win 7 in VB as a Vista rather than \’Other\’ windows. Compatibility tab had appeared! It has installed beautifully!
Thank you very much

By: Krotow

Krotow — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:51:55 +0000

Was tested under openSUSE 11.0 / VirtualBox 2.1.0. Host: P4-3GHz, 1 GB RAM, guest for Windows 7: 512 MB RAM, 32 MB Video RAM. Mount VBox Guest Additions CD and run VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe or VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64.exe (depends from your platform) with Windows Vista compatibility mode. Then reboot. Video resolution adaptation to window size and Seamless mode is now working without problems. Still figure, how to enable 3D video mode

By: Trish

Trish — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:22:12 +0000

Doesn’t work on an XP SP3 host. There is no compatibility tab

Any other suggestions? Would really like to get the guest additions to work – specially seamless mode.

By: eternicode

eternicode — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:09:03 +0000

Shinta, thanks for that tidbit, I hadn’t thought to try that.

After the guest additions are installed, does “seamless mode” work for you?

Edit: I can confirm that after installing the Additions with Vista compatibility mode, seamless mode does work, quite well! Thanks again for the tip, Shinta! I will update the post accordingly.

By: Herb

Herb — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:26:07 +0000

Much thanks TechKnack, Shinta, and Dombev

Thanks for the hints, they worked … also thanks for where “compatibility mode” needs to be set !

By: Dombev

Dombev — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:27:49 +0000

Thanks TechKnack and Shinta. My network works now on as I have edited the guest addition .exe file to
Windows Vista compatibility mode.

Dom