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I have downloaded the Windows 8 developer preview ISO and I'm trying to get it running on VirtualBox 4.1 in Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit. Short story: it doesn't work.

I see a message "Loading files..." followed by a title screen that says "Windows Developer Preview." Then I get an error with some funny boxes and in between it some text that appears to say '... restart your computer...' followed by some error codes.

My machine is a dual-core Intel Centrino running at 1.6GHz with 2GB of RAM. I have assigned the VM 1GB of system RAM, 32MB of VRAM and enabled PAE/NX and 2D acceleration.

What am I doing wrong?

Additional information:

  • My CPU does not support hardware virtualization.
  • The download is not corrupt since it boots in the actual computer without issue.
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"What am I doing wrong?" You are using Windows on Ubuntu. – Roland Taylor Sep 14 '11 at 21:46
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My CPU does not support hardware virtualization. - then you can't. – Sathya♦ Sep 15 '11 at 5:07
Try assigning some of those 32 gigabytes of video RAM to actual RAM. Just kidding, you don't have hardware virtualisation. – ta.speot.is Sep 15 '11 at 10:06
@todda: Ooops :) That's a typo. – George Edison Sep 18 '11 at 23:04
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4 Answers

up vote 6 down vote
  • Select Windows 7 as option in VirtualBox
  • Enable VT-x and Nesting Paging
  • Enable PAE/NX
  • Enable IO APIC
  • Enable 3D Acceleration, you can enable 2D Acceleration also

Source and step by step guide here : http://www.sysprobs.com/guide-install-windows-8-virtualbox

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I didn't enable 3D acceleration... trying that. – George Edison Sep 14 '11 at 22:01
That didn't work either. – George Edison Sep 14 '11 at 22:06
It's a challenge to get a developer build running on bare metal on certain types of hardware, this combined with Ubuntu as your host OS, may just be a battle not worth fighting. – Nick Josevski Sep 15 '11 at 3:44
@Nick Josevski: what is behind "Ubuntu as host OS"? – vtest Sep 19 '11 at 3:25
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up vote 2 down vote

This article will step you through installation on VirtualBox.

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I followed those steps too, worked fine. – Nick Josevski Sep 14 '11 at 21:08
I don't have hardware virtualization. – George Edison Sep 14 '11 at 22:01
@George Then I believe you are out of luck. – William Jackson Sep 15 '11 at 1:11
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up vote 0 down vote

VirtualBox seems to have more success loading the Windows 8 image than either VMware's or Microsoft's offerings. Grab a VirtualBox if you haven't already (why not? It's free!) and create a new system, using "Other Windows" as the OS type.

I don't know what the minimum required specs are for Windows 8, but I gave the VM 4096MB of RAM and a 60GB hard drive, which should be plenty. Choose to create a new start-up hard disk using the VDI file format.

More detailed instructions on these steps can be found here:

http://www.hypervhd.com/hyper-v-install-and-upgrade-f24/install-windows-8-in-vbox-t1726.html

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