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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.

Print | posted @ Thursday, July 28, 2005 2:34 AM

Comments on this entry:

Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Rob at 7/28/2005 3:49 PM
You, my friend are a godsend!
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by tuck at 7/29/2005 6:54 AM
I had no problem creating and formatting a disk using the installers own partition and format-functions....
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by dabs at 7/29/2005 3:31 PM
according to the release notes the installer cannot work with/format RAW partitions.

There was _something_ worth reading then...
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by scott at 7/29/2005 3:40 PM
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.
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by OLE-3 at 7/29/2005 5:40 PM
Hi.

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

Any idea?
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by scott at 7/29/2005 5:53 PM
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.
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by scott at 7/29/2005 5:54 PM
Also found this support article, which does indicate a corrupt disk:
support.microsoft.com/default.aspx
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by OLE-3 at 7/29/2005 6:28 PM
Ok, the host drive was the problem.
Now it works.
Thaks!
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by scott at 7/29/2005 6:35 PM
Viva la Vista!
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Scott at 7/29/2005 7:41 PM
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.
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Scott at 7/29/2005 8:04 PM
Ah, never mind. It's a bug in Virtual PC. There's a work around posted here.

www.robertmoir.co.uk/...

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
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by scott at 7/29/2005 8:06 PM
Yes, I did burn to a DVD first.

Robert Moir's VPC FAQ has some workarounds for that problem, see 7.8 here: www.robertmoir.co.uk/...
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by scott at 7/29/2005 8:07 PM
Ah - good find, Scott.

Viva la Vista!

I'll get tired of saying that in about 5 more minutes...
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Will at 7/31/2005 2:22 AM
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 (www.magiciso.com/.../miso-magicdisc-overview.htm)

Hope that helps anyone who is stuck with the same problem.
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by zounds at 7/31/2005 4:39 PM
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 :)
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Scott Allen at 7/31/2005 5:37 PM
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:

geekswithblogs.net/.../48690.aspx

geekswithblogs.net/.../48450.aspx

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

codebetter.com/.../129978.aspx

geekswithblogs.net/.../48541.aspx



  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by coaxial at 8/1/2005 7:42 PM
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
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Kenneth at 8/3/2005 11:49 AM
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: blogs.bartdesmet.net/.../3183.aspx.
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by scott at 8/3/2005 1:29 PM
... and here is some good information from Ben "The Virtual PC Guy".

blogs.msdn.com/.../447036.aspx
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by James at 8/19/2005 7:51 AM
You beauty!
formatdisk commands worked a treat
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Tom Medhurst at 3/15/2006 4:50 PM
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!
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Heath at 3/24/2006 3:00 PM
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
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Charlie Puth at 6/1/2006 12:42 AM
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!!!!!!!!!
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by lavan at 6/5/2006 1:55 PM
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.
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Rob at 6/11/2006 5:49 PM
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
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Philip at 7/13/2006 7:45 AM
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
  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by Harry at 8/13/2006 11:01 AM
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 ;)

  
Gravatar # re: Vista Beta 1 On Virtual PC
by MM Web at 10/24/2006 7:57 AM
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: www.unique-avalon.ch/2006/10/24/testing-vista/)

  

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