Virtualbox and Windows 7

[Steve]

Thought I write down a brief guide to installing Window 7 on a Mac using Virtualbox whilst it's still fresh in my memory.

The options for Windows on an Intel Mac are:

Apple Bootcamp – The only option if you wish to use your Mac for PC games however a restart is required/dual boot method is used.


Virtual Device Software: Parallels ,Vmfusion  and Virtual box, all these software allow you to run Windows or other OS within the Mac OS environment I use Virtualbox as its free and for me does all I need.


Virtualbox 3.1.2 can be found here http://www.virtualbox.org/  it is available for a variety of host OS's and runs well on a Mac with greater than 2Gb of ram although I recommend 4Gb ,My Macbook has 4Gb and is running SL 10.6.2

Install of Virtualbox is fairly straight forward there is an annoying popup box asking you to register with Sun Online on program launch. Future updates of Virtualbox have also been adopted without any issues.

There is a simple straightforward wizard for setting up a new virtual machine
This involves Name, OS – my case Windows 7 (32bit)
Ram size- I chose 2Gb but it will run with 1Gb.
Virtual Hard drive – Primary master , the size is up to you, I chose 20Gb with the dynamically expanding storage which grows to the maximum as the drive fills up.
Create drive and specify folder location (useful to remember as I omit this folder from Time machine backups, I use a WHS to backup and restore the virtual drive).


Next is install of OS If it's the first time you've run this machine it will ask you where your setup media is located and setup the cd/dvd drive itself. Insert the disk and off you go and it will perform the familiar Windows install. I used the Windows 7 upgrade version as it saves the cost of the full version and I don't see I'm diddling MS out of money as I've many copies of XP stored away.

I used the process described here http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp

to activate my copy, method 2 was successful for me.

Once fully updated and activated you need to install the guest additions.iso, which improves system performance including video and mouse integration. This involves disconnecting the CD/DVD and mounting the GA.iso

The final task is to setup shared folders with the host OS which only seems to work if you set it up at this final stage.


The network adaptor seems to work better in bridged mode and if you can't use the CD/DVD drive make sure the patch though box is ticked.

Once you've switched over to seamless mode its difficult to believe your using two OS on the same screen

If you don't like the result all you have to do is delete one folder.

Nearly forgot.   AV software is required on the Windows Guest OS


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[Simon]

Worth stickying, Steve?

[Steve]

It might be useful if other Mac users wish to fill in the gaps, although the beauty of Virtual Device software is that you can try something out in the Guest say a Windows Host and Windows guest and if it all goes wrong you can simply delete it and the host remains intact. For the Mac it allows you to use Windows software where there is no equivalent Mac OS application.