Setting up a Vista/Windows 8.1 dual boot system

I have a program that I used for years on my old computer with Vista OS. That computer died (motherboard failure) and was replaced with a computer running Windows 8.1.

The old program is not compatible with Windows 8.1. It won't install and the program vendor says it is not compatible.

Unfortunately, the program (an architectural CAD program) has generated some files that I have spent hundreds of hours creating, and I don't wish to lose that work. The new 8.1 version of the program is Windows 8.x compatible, but saves the work in a new format, and is not backwards compatible with the old format. There is no known application that can read the old format and save or convert it to the new format.

Would it be feasible to set my new computer up with a dual-boot capability, with 8.1 as the principal OS but having the ability to boot in Vista? Could I then install the old program and work with my old files? That means I have to partition my C:> drive, right? If it doesn't work out, can I "un-partition" it later? Do I have to have all the files (program file, libraries, data files, etc.) in the Vista partition to access them?

As you might surmise, this is a scary idea to me, and I don't know what the risks and the rewards might actually be.

tanstaafl.

Windows 8.1 comes with Hyper-V, MS vistulization product, and with this you will be able to run Viata within a virtual machine on top of but isolated from Windows 8.1

This pdf http://aztcs.org/meeting_notes/winhardsig/virtualmachines/Hyper-V/Hyper-V.pdf should clear things up for you.

In addition to Hyper-V, there is also VMWare and VirtualBox.

All three of them will allow you to install an older version of Windows into a virtual environment which you can then run as if it were the real thing.

It will run slightly slower than if it were running natively, but for the product in question, you won't necessarily notice a difference.

The only things I'd want to run in VMs are certain old games that don't play successfully with Win 8.1, but the VMs still don't support 3D cards very well so they're not really useful to me for that purpose yet, at least, not for the specific games I want to virtualize.

Your app though, should run fine in any of those 3.

Tony, what games are you trying to virtualize?

The most troublesome one at the moment is Populous: The Beginning. Specifically, the DirectX version.

The game has two EXE files:

There is a software-rendered version which works fine on Win8, PopTB.EXE.

The one I want to work is D3DPopTB.exe, which crashes every time with a page fault of some kind. I'm pretty sure the crash is due to it using DirectX 7, which just doesn't work on Win8. I seem to recall the page fault is in the D3D libraries somewhere.

I've been reading through forums on Populous Reincarnated and GOG.com, and everyone's solution there seems to be to just run the software-rendered version. Which is not what I want. Though it's what I'm doing for now because I have no other choice.

Neither VirtualBox nor VMWare can run this thing well in Direct3D mode. I think I got one of them to sorta kinda do it at one point, after a ton of tweaking and secret tricks and installing special drivers and editing the VM config files, but it was a slideshow when it ran, even while slamming my CPU/Video to 100%. I tried a ton of workarounds and config tweaks based on all the weird tweaks and things found in message boards and FAQs and howtows on the net, and none of them got it running satisfactorily in the VMs.

I had originally been wanting to do the same kinda thing with Homeworld, but then they came out with Homeworld: Remastered and I just bought that, and it's pretty good.

Most of my TRULY older games were in DOS and so run great under DOSBox with a bit of tweaking.

+1 to a Virtual machine. Legally you will need another licence but that's no different to a dual boot. Much easier to use. You can even suspend it with all your applications open like hibernating the host machine and just resume it when necessary.

Perhaps the compatibility mode options might work (right click on the .exe and then "Compatibility" tab? I've not used them much but they might get you over the line. That's in Windows 7. I presume 8/8.1 has similar options?

If it runs on Vista I'm a little surprised it won't on Windows 8.

Doug, was your Windows Vista 32 bits? If so, that could explain the incompatibility of this specific .EXE with your new 64bits Windows 8.1 .

Yes. And yes.

tanstaafl.

I shouldn't need another license... the old program is bought and paid for, and at present is not installed on any computer that I own.

Nope. Been there, done that. The installer won't do the installation, quits with a "InstallShield 1628 Failed to complete installation" error.

Oddly enough, the very first time I tried to install the program on the new computer, it did install and sort of run. The display was all strange, showed everything in wireframe instead of rendered, so I figured the install was corrupt, deleted the installation and re-installed. Except it never, ever would reinstall again.

The program vendor has said that it won't work in Windows 8.

The learning curve for the old program was horrible, and the new version is enough different I'd have to start all over again. I'd prefer to stay with the old one if I can.

tanstaafl.

He meant a licence for Windows Vista, not a licence for the problem program.

Ah! Of course.

I also have my original paid-for Vista installation disks. I'll probably have to convince Microsoft that my Vista is not currently installed on an existing computer, and that this is a legitimate installation, but I understand that can be done.

tanstaafl.

Yeah. It's easy to do. If you haven't activated that copy on more than one machine in the past, it will probably activate again with no questions asked. If not, a 5 minute phone call will take care of it.

Virtualization is definitely the way to go here and in case it isn't clear, it is fairly straight forward to achieve. It would go something like this with Virtual Box (which is free and easy to use):

- download/install VBox http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.3.26/VirtualBox-4.3.26-98988-Win.exe
- put your first Vista CD/DVD in your drive
- open VBox and press the button to create a new virtual machine (there is a wizard step-by-step process that takes you through the next few steps)
- when asked, tell it that you want to use Vista 32 bit as the guest operating system
- pick a level of memory to assign to the virtual machine
- choose to create a new virtual hard disk, pick a size for it (you have the option for a fixed size file that it stores the VHD in or a dynamic one, pick the dynamic option, that way the file will only grow as you add data to the virtual machine)
- press "Start" to boot the virtual machine
- VBox will ask you which drive you want boot from, pick the one with your Vista disk

After that, you are just in a normal Vista install.

Is this a reversible process? That is, if (when, actually...) I no longer need the ability to have a VM, can I easily revert back to the original configuration? Is the VM only taking up memory and disk space while actually in use?

tanstaafl.

It only uses memory when the VM is running, as soon as you shut it down (or pause* it) it frees up that memory.

It will continue to use the disk space though, otherwise you'd need to install Vista etc on it every time you used it. By picking a dynamic VHD you minimise the space it uses.

For example if you ask it to create a 50GB dynamic VHD, initially the disk space used will be only a few MBs at most. As you write to the VHD (by installing Vista on to it) the dynamic VHD will grow to store the data written (but to the copy of Vista running within the VM the disk will always appear to be 50GB in size).

So if say your Vista install takes 15GB, that is how much space your dynamically sized VHD will consume.

* if you pause the VM, rather than shutting Vista down, it will use a bit of extra disk space while paused, as VBox saves the active contents of the RAM of the VM to disk when you pause it (with the benefit that when you start the VM again it starts up in the same state when you paused it, just like if you had hibernated from within Windows on a physical machine)

Another great thing about virtualisation rather than dual boot is portability. You can take your virtual machine with your Vista setup and copy it across to any other PC at any time and run it there. Great when it comes time to move to a new PC in the future.

You even have portability between platforms. I have a WinXP VM set up just how I want it for my CD ripping (set it up years ago with dBPoweramp et al). It was originally created in VBox on a Windows Vista host machine, since the it has run on various different Windows host, a couple of OSX hosts and it now runs on my Linux server.

So if I uninstall the VM program everything goes back to the way it was? Disk space, RAM, etc?

I ask because my C:> drive is limited capacity (an SSD) and while there is enough room on it for a second operating system, it would be pushing it a bit. Can I install the VM program and virtual OS on my D:> drive instead? There's 600+ GB free on that one.

tanstaafl.

Yep, you can put them wherever you want. Here's 4 I have just sitting somewhere in my Documents folder on my Mac. I can just move that file anywhere, double click it, and VMWare will fire up just fine. virtualBox pretty much works the same way.

(Technically these are all folders, and they contain a file to represent the virtual hard disk, log files, some setting files, and a RAM snapshot if it was suspended. On OS X, VMWare chose to make the folder into a container to make sure people move everything needed at once).

I don't think the VM program its self will take up much space. You can just tell it to create the actual virtual machine on the other drive.

If you install the application on another drive it defeats a little bit of the purpose of having an SSD in the first place

If possible run the VM from the SSD (IMO). The performance gain will be quite significant. However you can run from the secondary drive no problem.

Note that if you use the VM sparingly, you can move it to the SSD, run it and then move it back to the drive with lots of space.

Think of the VM program as something like MS Word or Excel and the VM itself like a very large .docx or .xslx file (in reality they are a folder with a number of files but you get the idea).

Er, .docx and .xlsx files are folders with a number of files. Seriously. Copy one and rename to .zip and open it up.

Yes they are these days. I wasn't thinking of that when drawing the analogy. That's hidden to normal users though.

Whoa. Learn something new every day.

And very easy to remove password locks (well at least some of them). Unzip file, remove password in one of the files and rezip. It doesn't give you the password necessarily since it's not plain text, but you can just remove it.

I believe this is why this feature ended up being baked directly into Windows: https://www.microsoft.com/resources/docu...w.mspx?mfr=true

I'm surprised more apps didn't move towards doing this with their documents. Though with Windows 8 "modern" apps, they also end up being zip files, named .appx: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Packaging_Conventions

Well, as it turns out, apparently I discarded my old Vista installation disks last year after I purchased the new computer with Windows 8.1.

So, I have acquired a Windows 7 installation disk of questionable provenance. If I double-click it in Windows Explorer, it displays an installation screen that would apparently install Windows 7. However, VirtualBox tells me there is "No bootable medium found, system halted." (see screenshot)

In the root directory of the Windows 7 disk there are subdirectories: BOOT, EFI, SOURCES, SUPPORT, and UPGRADE. Additionally, there are files: AUTORUN.INF, BOOTMGR, AND SETUP.EXE.

??

tanstaafl.

You need to configure VirtualBox to see the CD drive as if it were its own.

Virtual machines don't always connect to the resources on your actual computer unless you tell them to. A few of them it does, for example I think the LAN connection is one that VirtualBox enables by default, but otherwise, things like USB devices and CD-ROM drives, by default it doesn't connect to them until you explicitly tell it to do so.

In your screen shot, where it says "Storage", I only see the virtual hard disk, not the CD-ROM drive. That's probably the issue.

Somewhere in the VirtualBox configuration will be a place for it to configure its virtual CD-ROM drive. It will be named something like "Devices" or something like that. And you will select some menu or button with a name similar to "Add Device" or somesuch. Once you've done that and selected that you want to add a CD-ROM to the virtual machine, then, there will be some kind of a choice where you get to choose what to put INTO that CD-ROM drive. You can choose to:

- Tell it to look at an ISO image file, and pretend the contents of that ISO image file are its CD-ROM drive. (an ISO image is like a single-file rip of an entire CD in one file on the hard disk.)

- Or, tell it to look at the computer's actual CD-ROM drive and use that as its CD-ROM drive.

In your case, you want the latter, since, you don't have an ISO image file of that CD, you have the actual CD.

I'm not sure, but also I seem to recall that if you want to use the CD drive in your real operating system (windows 8) then you have to disconnect/deconfigure the virtual machine using it. (The guest OS and the host OS can't use it at the same time). I could be wrong about that part, though, maybe they'll work together just fine.

By the way, if you DO have the CD-rom properly configured in VirtualBox, but it won't boot from your CD, there are a few possibilities:

- The pirated CD you've got might be crap, and wasn't made to be bootable. Bootable CDs have to be made in a special way to be bootable. If the pirates didn't do that step when they pirated the CD, then that's your problem.

- The BIOS of the virtual machine in VirtualBox might not be configured to auto-boot from the CD-ROM drive. You may have to configure that bit just like you would on a real computer. The usual thing, you know? Remember setting the BIOS back in the old days? Where you have to press a certain special key (like DEL or F12 or F2 or somesuch) as the virtual machine boots, then you get into the BIOS and configure which drives can be booted and in what order. Remember?

- You may simply have missed the "Press any key to boot from CD" message that appeared on the screen of the virtual machine when the CD gets read at bootup. It doesn't stay up for long, and if you miss it, it moves on and tries to boot from the hard disk.

I was going to link to the relevant part of the VirtualBox documentation, but it turns out that the documentation is terrible.

So:

- In the VirtualBox Manager window, with the VM stopped, go to Machine / Settings / Storage.

- Under "Storage Tree", next to the listed controller, click the little button that looks like a CD with a "+" on it. It's at the top. Ignore the buttons at the bottom.

- In the dialog that appears, click "Leave Empty". This will add an Empty CD/DVD drive to the VM. Click on it.

- In the "Attributes" pane on the right-hand side, click the little CD icon. It lists "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file" and "Host drive blah blah blah". Choose the "Host drive".

- Then, go to the "System" panel in the same dialog. On the "Motherboard" tab, there's a "Boot Order" list. Ensure that "CD/DVD" is checked, and that it's at the top.

Note that this is from VirtualBox 4.3.18, running on my Linux box, but it should be more-or-less identical on the Windows version.

OK, I did all that, results are still the same.

Attached is a screen shot with the new configuration. I had to delete and reinstall the VirtualBox program before it would let me get to the part about "...click the little button that looks like a CD with a "+" on it...", everything was pretty much greyed out before I reinstalled.

??

tanstaafl.

You missed the part in his instructions that said "with the VM stopped".

That's why those things were grayed out... the VM was still running, you can't change the hardware settings with the VM running. You didn't need to reinstall VirtualBox, you just needed to stop the virtual machine. It's the virtual equivalent of turning off the computer before you crack open the case to add new hardware.

From the screen shot, it looks like you've correctly configured the CD drive, and the boot order seems correct.

Assuming that you didn't miss the "press any key to boot from CD/DVD" message on the virtual machine (DOUBLE CHECK THAT), then it's my guess that this is your actual problem now (from my earlier post):

Also, one other thing you should check before you go further: Looking closer at your system configuration of the Virtual machine, it seems like it's got two CD-ROM drives configured. Don't know how that happened. Just in case that's the problem, make sure it's just one CD-ROM drive in the device configuration, and then see if it'll boot from the disk.

If not, then double check that the pirated CD is bootable or not. The way to tell if that, is to try to boot your real computer from it. Obviously don't follow through with the installation, just go far enough to see if the real computer successfully boots off of that CD, then turn the computer off before going through with the installation.

Assuming that the problem is indeed a non-bootable CD, then, one thing you might be able to do, is create a bootable Windows 7 installer ISO file, and then simply tell VirtualBox to use that ISO file instead of using the real CD drive. For example this way is one possible way:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/make-bootable-usb-cd-dvd-install-windows-using-iso-file/

I've never tried the method outlined there, but from the looks of it, one advantage to it is that it gets you an actual Microsoft installation ISO, rather than just some pirated disc. This assumes that your Windows 7 product key (possibly found on that pirated disc) is valid somehow. :-)

I changed the BIOS to boot first from CD drive, then from hard drive. It still boots up in Windows 8.1, so I suspect that you are correct, the DVD is not bootable. I'll go have a chat with my software pirate next Wednesday when the street market opens again.



Apparently not, in my case...

NOTE: If you want to create bootable CDs of Windows, you will only be able to do that with Windows Vista or XP.


If I understand correctly (probably I don't!) if I can get my computer to boot in the Virtual Machine, I can then put the Windows 7 installation disk in the DVD player and run the setup.exe to install the OS. Or does the Virtual Machine have to have an OS already installed to boot into?

tanstaafl.

No. How would you get the first OS in there?

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.

I would probably try and get another Windows 7 disk. Up until recently you could just download the .isos straight from Microsoft (effectively). You still needed a key and to activate it though.

BUT before you go down that path....

You mention changing the BIOS and it still boots Windows 8.1? So that's the main PC's BIOS? The Virtual machine has its own separate BIOS access that runs after powering on the VM. The VM really is a complete PC inside a program so has all the bits a non-virtual machine has - just most are done in software. Completely separate to the main BIOS.

Virtual Box has the boot order set in Settings->System->Motherboard. Move the CD/DVD-ROM to the top. Leave it and the hard disk checked. It should be that way already though.

Like this:
http://en.kioskea.net/faq/40841-virtualbox-how-to-change-the-boot-order-of-a-guest-os

Also I would remove the extra CD/DVD-ROM you have installed to prevent confusion. Not the G one.

This should be done with VM not running (off)

You shouldn't be rebooting the whole machine each time. Just reboot the VM. Your screen shot indicates you've got as far as booting the machine but you talk about booting 8.1 which doesn't make sense. If you just mean to try out the disc, some Windows 8 machines won't boot from the CD very easily I think due to some Windows 8 secure boot stuff (UEFI).

If still no go, I'd be looking at a new install disc or downloading a genuine ISO. Can you download ~3GB?

Ah I missed the boot order in the screenshot. You have that right then. New disk or ISO if you ask me.

I would never endorse such a thing, but you can download .iso images of equally questionable provenance on bittorrent. For backup purposes only, of course. If the VM doesn't need to be connected to the internet, you might consider Windows XP w/ SP3. Should consume significantly fewer resources and run much more responsively.

Well... First I spent 100 pesos (=$6.67 USD at current exchange rate) to buy a pirated copy of Windows 7. Yeah, I know I shouldn't do that... but in all likelihood I will only use it one time, to load my architectural CAD program and generate some pictures. Then the virtual machine will be deleted along with the pirated OS.

Next I installed the VirtualBox software so I could create a virtual machine.

Next I found that my pirated OS was an installation disk only, and was not bootable. This caused considerable angst on my part.

Next I got a lot of help from people on this bbs, to point me in the right direction.

Next, a bit of irony: I spent $30 on software (the latest "Nero Burning ROM") so I could make my $6.67 OS bootable. I think there is shareware out there that would do the same thing, but I have had good luck with Nero in the past and am comfortable with their UI concepts.

Next I found out how complicated it was to actually create the bootable DVD, since the Install.wim file was 3.46 GB, and the maximum size for a single file allowable on a boot DVD is 2.0 GB. (The workaround required some sleight of hand during the OS installation, swapping the two disks back and forth each time the system rebooted.)

Next I had to dig into the "Help" files for VirtualBox to find out how to change the default Host key so I could release the mouse. The default is the right CTRL key. My keyboard is more than 20 years old, and it doesn't have a right CTRL!

Next I found out that for whatever reason, dynamic space allocation didn't work, probably because of the missing Install.wim file on the bootable disk. The install crashed due to lack of disk space, so I deleted the Virtual Machine, and created a new one with fixed storage (25 GB) and began the installation again.

And... this time it worked! See the attached picture. It is an actual photograph of my computer screen because VirtualBox doesn't do screen shots.

I haven't tried my software yet, that will have to wait until Wednesday before I have time to do it. But hopefully...

tanstaafl.

Congrats! Wow, sounds like quite a journey, but I'm glad it worked for you.

Question out of curiosity: within Virtualbox, would you be able to send a Print Screen command to capture the screenshot?

On a Mac, you simply go to the menu Machine->take screenshot or Cmd+E

To screen shot a virtual machine, make the VirtualBox window active but don't click in the actual VM. Alt-Print Screen should do it then. You'll get the Virtual box window then.

If you click inside the VM and then Print Screen it will copy it to the clipboard inside the VM. VMware has good clipboard sharing, but I'm not sure VirtualBox does.

All Windows 7 disks should be bootable. Your method was round about but glad it worked.