Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

I wanted to try the Vista beta on a fresh Virtual PC this evening, but setup doesn’t cooperate.

Here is how I worked around it:

When you get to the “Install Windows” screen, press Shift+F10 toopen a command prompt. Type DISKPART at the prompt and use the following commands. 

select disk 0 
create partition primary 
select volume 1 
format fs=ntfs label="vista"

After this I typedEXIT to leave the utility, reset the VPC, and started the installation again.

If everything looks good, I’ll cross my fingers and install on my non-virtual laptop over the weekend.

posted on Wednesday, July 27, 2005 10:34 PM by scott Rated Excellent [5 out of 5].

Comments

Thursday, July 28, 2005 8:49 AM by Rob

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

You, my friend are a godsend!
Thursday, July 28, 2005 11:54 PM by tuck

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

I had no problem creating and formatting a disk using the installers own partition and format-functions....
Friday, July 29, 2005 8:31 AM by dabs

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

according to the release notes the installer cannot work with/format RAW partitions.

There was _something_ worth reading then...
Friday, July 29, 2005 8:40 AM by scott

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

It seems many people have had success creating a partition with the setup GUI, then resetting the VPC. I know this approach worked for me.
Friday, July 29, 2005 10:40 AM by OLE-3

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Hi.

I do what you wrote up there, but a little problem occured. See the link. :(

Any idea?
Friday, July 29, 2005 10:53 AM by scott

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Ouch, that looks like it might be a hardware problem of some sort. I'd run CHKDSK on the host drive and make sure it checks out.
Friday, July 29, 2005 10:54 AM by scott

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Also found this support article, which does indicate a corrupt disk:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q228888
Friday, July 29, 2005 11:28 AM by OLE-3

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Ok, the host drive was the problem.
Now it works.
Thaks!
Friday, July 29, 2005 11:35 AM by scott

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Viva la Vista!
Friday, July 29, 2005 12:26 PM by Cindy Brucato

# Installing Windows Vista Beta 1

Installing Windows Vista Beta 1 on VMWare and Virtual PC
Friday, July 29, 2005 12:41 PM by Scott

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Scott,

Did you burn the ISO to DVD first and then install it in Virtual PC? When I try to "capture CD ISO" while running Virtual PC it tells me that the iso does not appear to be a CD iso.
Friday, July 29, 2005 1:04 PM by Scott

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Ah, never mind. It's a bug in Virtual PC. There's a work around posted here.

http://www.robertmoir.co.uk/win/vpcfaq/VPCFAQ7-KnownIssueswithVP.html

I used the unsupported Windows virtual driver listed there. Makes me nervous as hell though. Using an unsupported driver to mount a disk image larger than VPC supports so I can install beta software. wheeeeee
Friday, July 29, 2005 1:06 PM by scott

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Yes, I did burn to a DVD first.

Robert Moir's VPC FAQ has some workarounds for that problem, see 7.8 here: http://www.robertmoir.co.uk/win/vpcfaq/VPCFAQ7-KnownIssueswithVP.html
Friday, July 29, 2005 1:07 PM by scott

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Ah - good find, Scott.

Viva la Vista!

I'll get tired of saying that in about 5 more minutes...
Saturday, July 30, 2005 7:22 PM by Will

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

with regards to the DVD mounting, I ended up using a freeware 3rd party DVD ISO mounting program.

And then in VPC I selected to capture the physical DVD drive (which was my mounted virtual drive).

There's many of them around the place, but the one I ended up using is called MagicISO Virtual CD/DVD-ROM (http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-magicdisc-overview.htm)

Hope that helps anyone who is stuck with the same problem.
Sunday, July 31, 2005 5:24 AM by Geoff's Blog

#

As a quick follow-up on this Public Service Announcement, here are two other nuggets about installing Windows Vista on Virtual PC.


You'll need to follow these instructions to properly format the virtual drive.

Don't.  Seriously, just don't...
Sunday, July 31, 2005 9:39 AM by zounds

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

I didn't have any problems choosing to format a partition on the way, but it didn't give me any clue that it was doing anything. Just kept saying the partition wasn't ready. It must have been formatting in the background tho' as when I exited the install and tried again the partition was formatted :)
Sunday, July 31, 2005 10:37 AM by Scott Allen

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Viva la Vista!

My experience putting Vista on a real machine hasn't gone too well. I've been trying on a newer AMD desktop and never get past step 2 - it just seems to hang for hours.

Here are some other opinions on installing Vista on VMWare and VPC:

http://geekswithblogs.net/ehammersley/archive/2005/07/31/48690.aspx

http://geekswithblogs.net/ehammersley/archive/2005/07/27/48450.aspx

http://brucato.us/BLOGS/cindy/archive/2005/07/29/647.aspx

http://codebetter.com/blogs/geoff.appleby/archive/2005/07/29/129978.aspx

http://geekswithblogs.net/bcorazza/archive/2005/07/28/48541.aspx



Sunday, July 31, 2005 6:57 PM by Stephen Leung

# Vista Beta 1 on virtual pc

TrackBack From:http://Stephen.cnblogs.com/archive/2005/08/01/204459.html
Monday, August 01, 2005 12:42 PM by coaxial

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Yay, thanks! this is a much better workaround than the XP half-install that other sites suggest. P.s. I'm running VM workstation 5, not VPC
Wednesday, August 03, 2005 4:49 AM by Kenneth

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Bart (a Belgian .NET guru) has a note on Vista Beta 1 instalaltion on Virtual PC too on his blog. Check it out over here: http://blogs.bartdesmet.net/bart/archive/2005/07/28/3183.aspx.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005 6:29 AM by scott

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

... and here is some good information from Ben "The Virtual PC Guy".

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/08/02/447036.aspx
Friday, August 19, 2005 12:51 AM by James

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

You beauty!
formatdisk commands worked a treat
Wednesday, March 15, 2006 9:50 AM by Tom Medhurst

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Thanks dude, this works on Vista Feb CTP aswell!

VMWare posted a similar comment but forgot to include the format command at the bottom, so it was a useless fix!

Thanks Again!
Friday, March 24, 2006 8:00 AM by Heath

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Anyone else having problems with Video, I can't get anything above 4bit.

I tried to install the additions but it hangs.

Host pc has a GForce FX 5950 256 MB PCI-16
Wednesday, May 31, 2006 5:42 PM by Charlie Puth

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Wait, im confused. When i did all that stuff that he told me to do in the command prompt, i restarted the Vitural Machine and after the VMware splash screen came up...it said, "No bootable CD was detected. To install...blah blah blah". PERSON WHO STARTED THIS FORUM...DID YOU DO THIS WITHOUT ISO IMAGE? DID YOU USE THE DVD OPTION INSTEAD OF USING AN ISO IMAGE? PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!
Monday, June 05, 2006 6:55 AM by lavan

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

hi charlie,

on vmware, when you make the changes in command prompt and reboot, you need to press escape in vwmare and force it to use the cd rom drive ,for some reason when you make the changes, it refuses to boot from the cd!

took me ages to figure out, must be some weird bug in vmware when you manually creat the partition.
Sunday, June 11, 2006 10:49 AM by Rob

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Hello.

I have vista Beta 2 and wanted to run it on VPC but it wouldn't install, and i have used this trick and i worked.

Rob
Thursday, July 13, 2006 12:45 AM by Philip

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

Just a heads up for everyone ive tred installing vista beta2 and when doing this i set the mem to 201mb and i got a ntfs.sus is missing or corrup messige but when i set the mem to 256 all went well so if u cant allacte 256mb of ram dont bother useing virtualisashion to install vista
Sunday, August 13, 2006 4:01 AM by Harry

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

It's not just Virtual PC; My automatic defrag on Vista July CTP left one of my partitions "corrupt and unreadable", and I can't even see it to run Chkdsk.

I'm leaving it dead until someone reports it on a disk they actually care about ;)

Tuesday, October 24, 2006 12:57 AM by MM Web

# re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC

I also wanted to test Vista on Virtual PC. But it was horrible slow and had a treeible workflow.
(You can read more about this on my blog: http://www.unique-avalon.ch/2006/10/24/testing-vista/)