VirtualBox USB Boot Disk Problems

I am a Windows user who will very shortly be moving over to Mac...I will however need to continue running Windows for a few applications as well as for work where we use proprietary Windows based software...

To prepare for the migration I decided to install VirtualBox on my Windows 7 laptop and then try to install Windows 8 as a VirtualBox VM...

While I got most of the way through I am now stuck...

1. I got VirtualBox installed without any issues.

2. I successfully downloaded the Windows 8 ISO file and created a bootable USB drive using the Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool.

3. The problem I am having is getting VirtualBox to boot / recognize the bootable USB drive that I created (I even tried the suggested trick of created a vmdk file but could not get that to work either). And, while I could simply create a bootable DVD as my laptop does have a DVD drive I am trying to avoid this as my MBA will not have such a drive.

Would therefore appreciate someone helping me out with this.

Thanks,


Joel


PS. As an aside, I noticed that VirtualBox has the capability to install OS X as a VM....has anyone tried this and, if yes, what was the result.

Appreciate the response...finally got it to work with a little help from the IT guys at work...turns out that I needed to enable virtualization in my BIOS...will let you know ho wit goes...


Joel

The saga continues a bit...two follow ups:

1. Is there a way to give VirtualBox the ability to see my physical hard drive to. for example, import graphics, etc.?

2. Is the above possible using VMFusion or Parallels.

3. Although I am new to VMs I am finding VirtualBox not to terribly user friendly...are VMFusion or Parallels more user friendly.

Thanks in advance,


Joel

JoelBC said:

The saga continues a bit...two follow ups:

1. Is there a way to give VirtualBox the ability to see my physical hard drive to. for example, import graphics, etc.?

2. Is the above possible using VMFusion or Parallels.

3. Although I am new to VMs I am finding VirtualBox not to terribly user friendly...are VMFusion or Parallels more user friendly.

Thanks in advance,


Joel

Click to expand...

No need to reply as I dug into the manual and got it going in no time...

Perhaps a little survey is in order...I have now being playing with VMs for a few days and am curious as to the following:

i) VMs seem as though there is a little / lot of reading required to get them running just right...though this forum might be biased are the benefits of running a Mac for some/most applications that much better than the Window's experience that playing with VMs is actually worth the effort?

ii) VMs once properly setup allow the user to run in coherence / seemless mode...is it really as good as running an application natively when running OS X as the host and Windows as the guest because I can tell you than when using VirtualBox there is an awful lot of tearing when moving between modes, there is both the host and guest task bar (have not figured this out yet), etc. admittedly this may be because I am running it in a older CoreDuo machine with only 4 GB of RAM.


TIA,


Joel

VirtualBox Update...

I have continued my testing and use of VirtualBox...I had time to kill on a 5 hour plane ride and decided to rip into the manual a little...I am new to VMS but found the manual -- at least the first 70+ pages that I read -- easy to follow and very helpful.

I am of the view that I now have a fair understanding as to how it works etc. but do want to figure out two additional items namely i) can I run in seamless mode and not have the VM's taskbar appear [I think the answer is not, at least for VirtualBox] and ii) can I pin a VM's application to the host desktop.

All in all there are many pros and cons to using VirtualBox's VMs relative to native applications...one con, though it may be my machine, it is not as fast and anything other than seamless mode [i.e. coherence mode in Parallels sucks (i.e. Windows in a box is bad)...one pro, backup and data security is simple in that you back up one file and have everything backed up (i.e. apps, data, etc.).

A thought...thinking of setting a VM environment and using it as the base / root installation for my kids as it will save me tons of time is setting up their machines for them.

Joel


PS. I cant tell whether anyone is interested in this thread so to the extent that you are please let me know and I will continue to post my experience / finding otherwise I will let it die as it seems I am talking to myself.