I've downloaded VirtualBox and opened it, it shows it as a program in my pop-up menu (Vector linux). When I try to use it to install another OS into a virtual HD, I get a screen saying to choose what size ram I want. Problem is,the "next" button on the bottom of the window is not hightlighted, it's dead as far as I can tell. Moving the cursor over it doesn't do anything, changing the slider bar to change the amount of ram doesn't make anything change, so I'm stumped. Anybody know what I'm doing wrong? The "back" and "cancel" buttons work, but that doesn't help me much as the only way to advance to the next page is by clicking on the non-working "next."

Could be a permissions problem. What exactly did you do to download and install VirtualBox?

It may not allow you to click "Next" if the amount of ram you have specified is invalid. How much ram does your physical machine have, and how much did you try to allocate to the virtual machine?

Evo2.

The download was from Sun
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads
It's the one on the bottom marked All distrobutions-i386
It downloaded and installed all right, the "next" push button just doesn't seem to be active when I get to the panel to set the ram size for the virtual HD. Changing the size doesn't make any difference. Maybe there's some qualification it expects that I haven't done (although I have no idea what it is. The page opens with a recomened minimum size for ram,and I would think that accepting the default would satisfy it.)

OK -- you downloaded the .run file from Sun, made it executable and executed it as root.

Your problem is unusual so we are looking for something unusual about your system.

Not related to your issue but for a bit of easy sanity checking, you could run the script posted here and post the output.

Is it only the "ram size for the virtual HD" push button that is grayed out? Is this in "Create new Virtual Disk", "Virtual Disk Location and Size"? If so, if you click the folder icon to the right of the Location field, does it show you a directory that exists and that you can create files in? By default it is /home/<user name>/.VirtualBox/HardDisks. Is there any free space on the file system that the directory is on?

Rats! I'm trying to copy from xterm, but I'm not getting too far. I tried to copy and paste the code in the link, unaware that it ran down the page, so I think I need to ask what line or part of the code do I need to get a response that'll make sense to someone trying to diagnose what I've got going on here. Sorry if I shoul recognize what the input should have been.
While on the subject, I was OK with getting the page to copy into xterm (but wasn't smart enough to see what exactly needed to be pasted!), but when I went to copy the raedout that xterm output, I could highlight it, but tried pressing the middle mouse button to copy, hoping to paste the results, but instead just got back what I'd pasted into xterm for a result.
This may give you some idea of the level of savy I'm working with here

Something simple: are you a member of the vboxusers group? To find out

Easier and safer to edit the whole script into a file and then run it. IDK Vector Linux; does it have a GUI with a graphical editor? That would be the easiest way. If you do get the script into a file you need to set execute permission on it and easiest to run it by ./ To copy and paste from xterm: highlight the text you want to copy (this puts it in one of X's buffers) then put the cursor where you want to paste it and middle click to paste.

Meanwhile you could answer the questions about the VirtualBox graphical interface.