Vista installation on a Virtual Machine

[Dung]

Hi,

I'm using MS Virtual Server 2005 R2 to build a lab of Vista machines. With
the FEB CTP release, I was able to install Vista, Longhorn on Virtual
Machines. But since the latest builds ( greather than 5308), I'm not able to
install the OS on a VMs anymore. After the first reboot, Vista hangs ( 100%
CPU) after prompting for username and computer name.
Lonhorn server crashes during the first reboot once the installation is
complete. I think the machine check error is something ending with 7E

Have you got any success with Vista/LH in a VM so far ( after FEB CTP)?

Thanks
/Dung

 

[Zack Whittaker]

Works great in Virtual Server 2005 R2 - Virtual PC 2004 is crap though.

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--

 

[Dung]

Many thanks for the information.
Can you share the VM config? Is it a SCSi disk or IDE disk? How big is the
disk? What is the RAM config of the VM?
Also is it an upgrade or a fresh installation?
/Dung

 

[Kristan Kenney]

I have succesfully installed later builds of Windows Vista in Virtual PC
2004 Service Pack 1. I too had the horrid CPU usage after setup completed
and OOBE (the User Name and Password creation screen) launched, I had to use
the keyboard to tab through the entires and enter my data accordingly. Using
the mouse would almost instantly cause it to lock up. Virtual Server 2005 R2
additions were installed after a complete installation and made a decent
improvement but not as noticable as previous builds (5270, 5308, etc).

Have a nice day!

 

[Guest]

Vista Beta 2 on VS2005 - SLOW !
Longhorn - better

I had trouble installing until i removed my SCSI drive, install on IDE then
add a SCSI drive to the VMC

I use a basic, 512MB, IDE VM (You'll probably want more then 512, trust me)

Hope this helps

 

[Guest]

I'm also having trouble installing Beta 2 under Virtual Server R2. No
obviousl problem mounting/using the ISO image, but the installation has
issues.

First, it some 18 hours to do the initial installation.
Then, the first time the install rebooted, it gave me an error message about
bootmgr missing. Startup repair can't fix it. Command prompt/diskpart only
shows the DVD.

Best guess, it's because I chose to use SCSI instead of IDE disk. Probably
needed to load the VM SCSI drive during installation. Not sure how...

 

[Guest]

Tried to reply to this, got an error message any the whole posting was
toasted. I HATE it when crappy software blows away my work without even
trying to save it!

 

[Ken Wallewein]

I had a similar problem installing Vista Beta 2 on Virtual Server 2005 R2
with a SCSI virtual disk. The initial installation completed, apparently
successfully (after about 18 hours!), but the initial reboot complained
about bootmgr missing.

Repairing didn't help. Opening the command prompt and running diskpart, no
sign it could even see the SCSI disk. Tried a repair loading the 2003 SCSI
shunt drivers; it loaded them, but no help seeing the disk. Tried
re-installing and feeding it the shunt drivers from the .vfd via the Load
Driver option in the "where do you want to install Windows" screen. It
just said no device drivers were found; wouldn't let me tell it where to
look. Gotta wonder about that.

So much for SCSI.

Tried to switch the SCSI disk to IDE, it wouldn't let me because its max
size was 256MB, max for IDE is 127.5.

So now I'm re-installing from scratch on IDE.

BTW, I tried to post this via the Vista forum's web interface. It just
vomplained about some mysterious error and blew away everything I'd typed.
I HATE IT when stupid, poorly designed user interfaces blow away my work.

No wonder I prefer NNTP.

/kenw