Originally Posted By: Roger
The VM will boot from a physical CD/DVD in the host's drive (which is what we've been trying to do), or it can boot from a virtual CD/DVD image (an ISO file).
I'm just not smart enough to figure out how to do this.

OK, here's what I've got:

1) A Virtual Machine set up by VirtualBox, dynamic storage, 1024K memory allocated.

2) A host CD/DVD defined.

3) A Windows 7 installation disk, apparently not bootable. [Even though I have configured my BIOS to boot first from the CD/DVD, it still boots into Windows 8.1 from the hard drive. VirtualBox says that the Windows 7 installation disk contains no bootable medium.]

With just those things to work with (plus, of course, my regular Windows 8.1 OS) what do I do to get Windows 7 installed in the Virtual Machine, preferably described step by step in words of one syllable or less? In other words, how do I make my Windows 7 installation disk bootable so that VirtualBox will be happy with it?

I'm sorry I'm such a dummy about this, but this stuff seems to be beyond my pay grade.

tanstaafl.
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