Have Disk Error when installing XP

Magus2727 said:

I have 8 gigs of DDR3... That should be enough right?

so what all does this VirtualBox do? I have gone on the web site but it is kind of confusing to see how i can use it for XP. does this allow me to "install" XP or does virtual box become an "emulator" even though on the about it says that it runs better then an emulator.

That is plenty of ram, with a virtual machine you will setup a virtual operating system that runs while you are running W7 you have both. It is easy to install just download the windows version and you can get started its fairly straight forward.

Can you post a picture of your Disk Management window? Just attach it using the paperclip.

What is you status exactly. You can get into Win 7 but still unable to install XP? What have you tried to get it to install.

I have the virtual machine up and running... although trying to activate windows is having problems and is having problems connecting.

I am at work and will try to do a picture of the disk management. I have tried the following two things both with the same results...
I have two drives C and D, C has windows 7 installed and D is my storage drive. ON another forum (before posting on this forum) I asked if the tutorial on this site was the right way to do a dual boot. I also said I wanted to install it on the storage disk. It was recommended that it may run better if it actually was on the same disk.

So I proceeded to follow the tutorial found on this site.

I went into disk management and created a 50 Gig partition on the drive, formatted it and assigned it a drive letter and name. I proceeded to reboot the computer and boot from the XP disc. It detected my SATA drives fine with out problems (no need for loading drivers) and I selected to install XP on the new partition. it starts to copy over the files and then reboot's once it has done copying the files over to "load" into the XP install program. When it reboots i go through my BIOS start up screen and then on a black screen says:

Loading operating system....
Boot from a CD/Disk....
Press any key to boot from a CD/Disk...
Disk read error
Press ctrl+alt+del to restart.

No mater how many times I restart the computer it will always do that. I then tried booting from the CD again, and I have done combinations of reformatting, deleting the partition and re assigning it. And I get the same thing. I then delete the partition, and quit out of the install of XP (so XP has not copied any thing over and the drive is "gone".) It still says a disk read error and I reboot with the windows 7 DVD and complete a reboot repair and it starts up like nothing ever happened.

I then tried on the second “storage” drive and when in disk management I also assigned the 100MB system section that windows 7 has a drive letter.

Same thing happened when I tried to install on my second drive which I crated a 20 gig partition with one difference is that it would freeze after the initial files/drivers saying starting Windows install... it never got around to letting me pick a drive to install on or copy files onto. I would do a hard restart on the computer (Ctrl+Alt+Del did nothing) and try the install again. On the second time it would work but give the same disk read error and previous times.

I am afraid of trying it on a whole drive it self since I have backed up data on the drive that I don’t/cant loose in the event a complete deletion of the drive is needed to reboot in windows 7 again.

wee said:

Magus2727 said:

I have 8 gigs of DDR3... That should be enough right?

so what all does this VirtualBox do? I have gone on the web site but it is kind of confusing to see how i can use it for XP. does this allow me to "install" XP or does virtual box become an "emulator" even though on the about it says that it runs better then an emulator.

That is plenty of ram, with a virtual machine you will setup a virtual operating system that runs while you are running W7 you have both. It is easy to install just download the windows version and you can get started its fairly straight forward.

Got it running, curious about the drivers.... do i need to install drivers? I have tried a few times to install my video card drivers but it fails to install. It’s the XP version so its not a compatibility problem. But noticing on the settings for the VirtualBox that it has video card options, that limit memory or 3D rendering done.

Do I need to do audio, USB, Video, and such drivers?

Also is there a hot key command to bring up task manager in VirtualBox?

In order to move files over to the Virtual machine I will need to copy the files onto a USB drive or some sort when on my “actual” computer and then access the drive through the virtual machine right? Or is there a setting that you can do some sort of drag and drop?

I got XP up and running and installed all some 70 updates so I will be making sure every thing else is up and running and then install one of the games and see how it works.

Last question… on this post…. I have an “O.K” video card ATI XFX 5770 series that has plenty more memory space then what VirtualBox will allow to be used…. I have it maxed out at 128MB, will limiting it to 128 MB cause issues with full screen graphic intensive videogames (i.e. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2)? Or can I balance that out with the amount of physical memory that I allot for it (have 3 out of 8 Gig now).

Magus2727 said:

wee said:

Magus2727 said:

I have 8 gigs of DDR3... That should be enough right?

so what all does this VirtualBox do? I have gone on the web site but it is kind of confusing to see how i can use it for XP. does this allow me to "install" XP or does virtual box become an "emulator" even though on the about it says that it runs better then an emulator.

That is plenty of ram, with a virtual machine you will setup a virtual operating system that runs while you are running W7 you have both. It is easy to install just download the windows version and you can get started its fairly straight forward.

Got it running, curious about the drivers.... do i need to install drivers? I have tried a few times to install my video card drivers but it fails to install. It’s the XP version so its not a compatibility problem. But noticing on the settings for the VirtualBox that it has video card options, that limit memory or 3D rendering done.

Do I need to do audio, USB, Video, and such drivers?

Also is there a hot key command to bring up task manager in VirtualBox?

In order to move files over to the Virtual machine I will need to copy the files onto a USB drive or some sort when on my “actual” computer and then access the drive through the virtual machine right? Or is there a setting that you can do some sort of drag and drop?

I got XP up and running and installed all some 70 updates so I will be making sure every thing else is up and running and then install one of the games and see how it works.

Last question… on this post…. I have an “O.K” video card ATI XFX 5770 series that has plenty more memory space then what VirtualBox will allow to be used…. I have it maxed out at 128MB, will limiting it to 128 MB cause issues with full screen graphic intensive videogames (i.e. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2)? Or can I balance that out with the amount of physical memory that I allot for it (have 3 out of 8 Gig now).

So with the virtual you can share folders with both systems, I never needed to do that but information is on the web, and the sun virtual site. Basically the XP is running as a normal operating system so any hotkey command would be a usual I assume here again I don't use that feature. I am not sure about drivers and 3d graphics etc you will have to look for more information. I mainly suggested this as I had used it with W7 and XP inside with only 2 gigs of ram on a netbook and it worked fine a little slowed down, but your system is more robust so it seemed like a alternative.

Thanks for the info on the Virtual so far its the furthest i have gotten.

I am primarily a open source user and spend most of my time on this forum which has a virtual, area of discussion. You may find helpful hints and many on this forum are multi-booting so it is pretty open for help. Virtualization - Ubuntu Forums

Well the Virtual Machine fails at playing the games... since they run a hard ware detection and can not detect the video card or since the Virtual machine cant detect the VRAM of the Video card or allows for an openGL... it says it needs Non-windows Generic OpenGL 1.4.0 Drivers...

Blah...