Windows 7 on the Mac
I’m trying to install a beta of Windows 7 in a VirtualBox on my iMac.
VirtualBox is a free, open-source application that lets you run one operating system inside another. I use it at work, to run a relatively bulletproof Ubuntu install on my Windows laptop, and I use it at home, to run Windows XP on my Mac. I love it, and it generally works very well.
The idea is that you create a virtual machine, and a virtual hard drive, and then you download an .ISO file, and tell that virtual machine that it’s a CD-ROM.
Generally it works great.
So I downoaded the .ISO from Microsoft, and started the install.
The installer loads and starts up fine. But it quickly stops with a (very attractive!) dialog box that says:
Windows could not collect information for [OSImage] since the specified image file [install.wim] does not exist.
Windows 7 error message
Duhhh…. What? I will try to figure this out.
Update #1: I reproduced the issue with Parallels, which makes me suspect that the issue may be related to user idiocy. Like maybe there’s another dickdisk, or something, that I didn’t download, because I’m an idiot.
I will see.
Update #2: Looks like lots of people are having this problem, on a wide range of virtual and real platforms. Like this thread in Vista Forums.
The suggested fixes that I can find all imply that I have an old, or bad, CD-ROM drive. Or the CD is corrupt. This doesn’t make sense for me, since my CD-ROM drive is pretend.
The ISO I’m using is named 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso. I got it from Microsoft’s technet site. The funny thing about it is that, evey though I can boot from it, I can’t mount it with the Mac, as I can with other ISO files. So I can’t burn it to a CD.
I think that there’s something wrong with this ISO. I am going to try for a new one.
Update #3: I’m trying for another ISO from the Microsoft site. Problem: the download link works doesn’t work with Firefox or Safari.
Aaaargh!
Update #4: I finally got a new .ISO. The problem appears to have been that the old one was corrupt. I have gotten past the error message about “Windows could not collect bla bla bla…” I am hopeful. The new .ISO, which has the same name as te previous (bad) one, takes up 2.77 Gb. The bad one was 677 Mb. Being a genius and all, I have figured out that maybe there’s a problem with that.
Results: I was able to get Windows 7 working, without drama, on both VirtualBox and Paralells. Neither one did networking correctly at first. The default VirtualBox setup chose the wrong network adapter. I told it to use the Intel 100/1000 adapter, and it worked: I am able to connect to the Inernet with Windows 7 on the Mac. Note that with VirtualBox, you have to shut down the virtual machine before you can change the network cards.
Without using a lot of silly quotation marks (e.g. I had to “change” the “network card” in the “computer”) it makes sense: you can’t rearrange the hardware while the computer is running. Massive hardware changes require an OS restart.
Networking of the the Parallels installation wasn’t so simple. I noticed that, in the “About This Mac” application, there are some extra software-based network adapters, with names like Parallels NAT” and “Parallels Host – Guest.” I assume that these were installed when I installed the Parallels software, and that they allow the non-existent virtual computer to connect to the real Internet, along with a pretend MAC address and a real IP address.
My problem tonight is that I can’t get the networking to go (in the Parallels install). The funny thing about Parallels is that you can change the hardware (some of it) while the machine is running. This is very cool. But I can’t find a combination of settings that works with Windows 7.
Once can choose Default Adapter or Ethernet Adapter. One can also choose Host-Only Networking or Shared Networking.
Do I understand these? No, clearly I do not. I can guess at what they mean…
But I’ve tried them all, and I can’t get Windows 7 to connect to the Internet under Paralells.
So for now, I’m using VirtualBox to make Windows 7 go on my iMac. It’s significantly limited in many respects. For example, because there’s no hardware video acceleration (the concept of “hardware” loses meaning when your hardware is all pretend), I dont get the fancy graphics when I switch from one application to another. But that’s OK: alt-tab still works, and has the pleasant new benefit of including the desktop.
Update #5: Networking is running fine on Parallels. See this post, in which I also learn how to SPELL the word “parallel.”
January 10th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I found your post because I’m having the same issue in Virtualbox with Ubuntu host. Although, I think our ways of resolving the issue will differ. I hope you find the DICK you are looking for!
January 10th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Jon: Oh, dear me. I am an idiot. I fixed the post. But too late: on the Internet, you can’t ever take anything back.
January 10th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Same problem here. Tried with two images 32bit and 64bit, downloaded both from Mircosoft. My DVD-RW is not that old, maybe few years and works great with everything else. It’s LG GSA-4167B with newest firmware.
January 11th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
The ISO was corrupted for a long time, I just had to keep retrying. My main Windows 7 install is in Vbox on a Vista machine.
The direct link I used was http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.ISO
January 11th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Hi, Leto from Parallels here,
Hopefully a fresh download of the ISO will work. It does sound like the image is corrupted somehow.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Wow. The Parallels dude himself. Jeez. I think I need to upgrade. Thanks, Leto! I will keep trying for a not-corrupt ISO.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Matthew:
Thanks, that link is apprarently working for me. I’ll try it. You are very kind.
So are you saying that you got it installed?
— Hawkins
January 13th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Hello, if you are interested i can assist you in getting the networking to work inside the windows 7 vm ( I work for parallels tier 2 support) I think it would be rather simple to fix.
January 14th, 2009 at 10:59 am
The problem is because the CD/DVD drive is too old.
Change The CD/DVD drive by a recent model.
January 14th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
It’s definitely not because of corrupted ISO, at least my image and burned DVD is fine. It’s the DVD-ROM or something with the machine that’s incompatible with that beta. Tried with two (fairly new) DVD-drives with no luck. Tried with bootcamp on my Macintosh and everything worked fine :/
Dunno what gives, never had any problems with any Linux, XP or Vista on my PC. It’s just this Win7 beta that doesn’t work.
January 14th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Hi, I’m using parallel desktop 4.0 and I can’t get the network too. Can you give me some help?
January 14th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Pablo: The problem wasn’t the drive. It turned out to be a corrupted .ISO file. When I got the 2.77 Gb version of the .ISO file, the install worked.
Ivan: I will pursue getting the network to go, and will post my progress, and anything I learn, here.
January 14th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Don’t steal my cookie, Mich! *smack*
I’m going to look into the networking issue. Can you give a bit more information? In the VM configuration, are you set to Shared or Bridged Ethernet? Maybe you tried both? The difference is that Shared takes your existing Mac OS X network connection, and Bridged Ethernet sets Windows as a separate machine on the network.
It’s strange that networking would be such an issue. On my home install of Windows 7, it connected very easily to my wireless setup (even prompted about it on Win 7 install) so I assumed Windows 7 net was simplified. That said, it is still beta…
January 15th, 2009 at 6:57 am
I’ve tried bridge, Shared, and even ethernet. None of it seems to work.
I’ve tried installing the driver from the Mac OS X cd, or even the driver from windows 7 itself and it didn’t work. Says that the driver isn’t compatible.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Hawkings, you got some custom ISO image then
The real ones from MS:
2.44GB for 32bit, MD5: f9dce6ebd0a63930b44d8ae802b63825
3.15GB for 64bit, MD5: 773fc9cc60338c612af716a2a14f177d
January 15th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Mr tuhnu:
I believe I have the right image. I got my image from Microsoft, with my TechNet subscription. The MD5 hash of the file that I got matches yours.
For those who need a reminder about the MD5 hash: a hash is a one-way cryptographic process that turns a big file into a long number. The idea is that if you change even one byte in the big huge file, the resultant hash value will change.
On OS X, you can calculate the MD5 hash of a file by saying this in a terminal window:
openssl md5 [filename]
January 15th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Leto and Mich:
Thank you both for taking an interest.
I have tried both Bridged and Shared networking. I have started a new post about this here, to try to make this less confusing.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:09 am
The solution that I’ve found to this, at least in Parallels, is to have the Parallels disk attached to your VM and then go into device manager (Right click computer in the windows menu and click manage/device manager open the network device that is not functioning right click/properties/advanced tab/update driver button and select update driver and choose “Browse My computer for driver software” and then choose the “Parallels Tools Setup Disk” in my case D:. If I recall correctly it didn’t catch it the first time but did the second. This also worked for the undetected Multimedia device within device manager.
January 27th, 2009 at 1:56 am
I’ve been able to install Windows 7 Beta inside VirtualBox and it runs quite nicely (better than Parallels, I think) and I can even run SPSS. But there is no networking
What do you mean by “I told it to use the Inter 100/1000 adapter” The only four options I have for adapter types are PCnet-PCI, PCnet-FAST III, Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop, and Intel PRO/1000 T Server. I’ve tried option 1 and 3 in that list to no avail. I generally run my Mac on airport so I’ve told the settings to attach to Host Interface as opposed to NAT and then selected the “en1: Airpot” option. Anyone have any thoughts?
January 27th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Russell:
Sorry, that was a typo: I meant Intel network card. I only was offered two choices, I believe because I have wireless networking turned off on this iMac.
Have you been able to install the guest additions? I don’t remember if this helped. But it sure made it easier to work on.
May 19th, 2010 at 11:21 am
I’ve been able to install Windows 7 Beta inside VirtualBox and it runs quite nicely (better than Parallels, I think) and I can even run SPSS. But there is no networking
What do you mean by “I told it to use the Inter 100/1000 adapter” The only four options I have for adapter types are PCnet-PCI, PCnet-FAST III, Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop, and Intel PRO/1000 T Server. I’ve tried option 1 and 3 in that list to no avail. I generally run my Mac on airport so I’ve told the settings to attach to Host Interface as opposed to NAT and then selected the “en1: Airpot” option. Anyone have any thoughts?