Sunday, September 22, 2013

VirtualBox: Running a 64 bit host RHEL OS on a 32 bit Windows machine

My VBOX is a
facter | more

architecture => x86_64
hardwareisa => x86_64
hardwaremodel => x86_64
kernelrelease => 2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64
kernelversion => 2.6.32

processor0 => Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3437U CPU @ 1.90GHz

so it clearly expects a 64 bit OS and 64 bit Processor.

My CPU is clearly up to the task, but the host OS is clearly not (Windows 7 32 bit)



Contrary to popular belief, it can be made to work, as long as you are allowed to enable VT-D hardware virtualization in your BIOS (most likely you will have to provide a password).

This is documented here http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03.html and here http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch10.html#hwvirt.

I have managed to make it work on my laptop, but it has crashed several times with a BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH. This seems to happen whenever I hibernate my computer while the Vistual Machine is up and running.

Once more I really regret having to use a Windows guest OS to work...



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