We’ve written a bit about VirtualBox, a very easy to use x86 virtualization tool. It supports Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD and a bunch of other OSes as well.
Vista however, can present a problem. There are no built in network drivers for the virtual NIC that VBox implements. Without a network connection, it gets kinda hard to download and install the appropriate drivers. If you’re on Ubuntu or a Debian based distro, here’s what to do.
First we’ll get the appropriate driver:
wget http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/V4.51.zip
Now, we’ll have to unzip it.
unzip V4.51.zip -d vista
We’ve just made a folder called ‘vista’ with all of the driver info needed. Lastly, we’ll create an ISO image from this folder.
mkisofs -o vista.iso -R vista
Once that’s complete, you can mount the ISO through VirtualBox and restart your virtual Vista install.
When you boot into Vista, you’ll right click on My Computer, choose Manage and then update the driver with software on the ‘cd’ you have mounted.
September 20th, 2007 at 4:08 am
Hello, tank you, it works. But there is no need to have just Debian or Ubuntu. I think it runs on other usual distributions as well. Anyway, there is already prepared iso file in new version of Virtualbox.
March 8th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Also, you do not have to mount the image before you boot into Vista. You can mount when your running the virtual machine I believe.
September 19th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
this worked perfectly and I don’t have a AMD
November 10th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Works a treat on Windows 2008 also. Good stuff.
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Note that this does not work for 64 bit Vista. In that case it’s necessary to set the adapter type to one of the Intel PRO/1000 cards, and note that those cards currently aren’t part of the virtualbox-ose package (at least not the one that comes with Ubuntu Intrepid).
December 5th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Hi, I tried in vista ultimate x64 but it doesnt work. does any one knows how to solve problem.