Comment by StevePerkins | Hacker News Reader

Comment by StevePerkins | Hacker News Reader

I tried installing this on the latest VirtualBox release. It installed cleanly, but the VM would not fully boot. It just hangs on the startup splash screen, with the progress bar about three-quarters of the way across.

I found a wiki page advising VirtualBox users to disable "I/O APIC", and to change the virtual network adapter to "PCnet-FAST III". But this made no difference.

Just to be thorough, I re-installed completely from scratch with these settings. Still no difference.

Just to be crazy thorough, I created a new VM profile that was set for a 32-bit guest. Reinstalled from scratch. Still no difference.

Gave up.

Nothing but respect for the ReactOS folks, and all they've done over the years. But I imagine that the overwhelming majority of people who try this out are doing so in a VirtualBox VM. So if you don't have an up-to-date and accurate list of instructions for installing ReactOS on VirtualBox, prominently displayed near the download page, then you might consider prioritizing that.

I just tried it in VMware Workstation, both on Linux and Windows. Looks to be 32-bit only. Did not install. Rebooted to black screen. Also did not detect multiple CPUs. Tried settings for windows NT, 2000, 2003, Windows XP and Windows XP-64-bit. I've booted Windows NT 3.51 in here as well as OS/2 Warp, Solaris, and other less used OSes in here. This is one of the very few that didnt boot. I dont get how Windows NT 5.2 (2003-level) is going to be very useful anymore as the two OSes at that level, Windows XP-64 and Windows 2003 are out of support so while this project is impressive Im not what the point of it is outside of being an interesting science project. It also didnt support NTFS, only FAT during install.

NOTE: Just got it working. Seems to be UP only, 32-bit only, works under "Windows XP Pro" profile with IDE only.

Impressive clone of windows 2003 32-bit, 13-14 years after...

VirtualBox is a real piece of crap when it comes to support for small-time operating systems, and even Linux (no KMS, no DRM, etc). I strongly recommend qemu instead.

>So if you don't have an up-to-date and accurate list of instructions for installing ReactOS on VirtualBox

They have preinstalled image for VirtualBox.

> So if you don't have an up-to-date and accurate list of instructions for installing ReactOS on VirtualBox, prominently displayed near the download page, then you might consider prioritizing that.

If you scroll down while on the downloads page, you'll find preloaded images for QEMU, VMWare, and VirtualBox under the "Advanced Downloads" section header.

I installed it literally 2h ago with no problems. Set the OS to Windows Server 2003 32-bit and don't touch anything else. It installed in no time and it works perfectly.

http://i.imgur.com/bBLBWY5.png

I found the Windows Server 2003 thing in their wiki:

https://reactos.org/wiki/VirtualBox

I had that issue with the boot process hanging 3/4 through on 0.4.3, but it (so far) seems to be fixed for me on 0.4.5. I'm using Parallels Desktop, with a 32-bit VM set to act as Windows 2000.

UPDATE your VirtualBox to the latest release FIRST!

"I tried installing this on the latest VirtualBox release."....

There is no such version of VirtualBox named "latest VirtualBox release". So no useful information.

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