Here is the scenario. . .

I have a Dell Mini 1018. It has one gig of ram.
I purchased it with Windows 7 "Starter", which is a watered down Windows 7 32 bit.

After about 4 months the operating system went sour on me.

So, I loaded Ubuntu instead of Windows 7, and I figured I would run VMWare or Virtual Box for my Windows 7.

WMware loaded nicely. . .So I started installation of Windows 7.

After a few days of fighting it, (only one percent of files "extracted") I switched to Virtual Box. Same thing. . .

So, what I decided to do, was leave the computer on overnight.

Through trial and error, (about 3 days of installing non stop) I was only able to get to 6 percent of decompressing files.

With my older lap top, I was able to do the complete install of Windows XP in VMware in probably less than 1 hour at the most. (And this is with only 256M of ram)

So, I copied my VMDisks to my little Mini 1018 and I am able to run Windows XP fine.

Everything works fine except for Netflix. (Netflix works great with my laptop that I use VMWare to load XP on) But XP on my Mini will continually give security error in Netflix.

My question is, how can I load Windows 7 on my mini through VMware or Virtual Box? I have spent 2 weeks on this, and it just doesn't seem to load it up.

Thanks in advance.

Dwayne

Have you tried installing the VM on a more powerful machine, and then simple moving the VDI to the mini?

I haven't tried this myself, but I have an underpowered Atom box handy... I'll give it a whirl.

This was how I got Windows XP on my Mini machine. My older Laptop has a VMI of Windows XP, and I finally gave up and copied that VMI to my mini computer. I know my mini computer has 4 times more memory, and a speed that smokes my older laptop.

I guess I could try installing Windows 7 on my old laptop, and see what happens.

The mini is a new machine. . just came out last year.. . My older laptop is a Dell inspiron 1150. . .probably at least 8 to 10 years old. Old enough my internal WiFi will not work with any of the linux operating systems. Broadcom type modem. . . I ended up having to get a USB Wifi and using that.

Dwayne

Hello Mbybee,

I forgot to thank you for responding.

I did notice, that when I copied my Windows XP over to my mini. MY Netflix stopped working and gave me errors.
I uninstalled Siverlight and reinstalled it, but that did not fix the problem. Under my old laptop, Netflix works perfect.
Thus, some kind of security code is probably in existent that binds the two operating systems, or recognises hardware installation and hardware types. Mac addresses maybe?

Dwayne

You need 1G ram free to run 32 bit Windows 7. The base or host OS is using part of that amount and your hardware is using part of that amount so you are left with the very much too little 256M. You need more ram.

oK, finally got it to load on my mini. . ..

What I had to do, was make a ISO file and load it from there. It took about 4 hours, but it worked. The mini now has a standard base operating system of Ubuntu, using VMware it loads up Windows 7 starter and runs it. I can watch a netflix movie in Windows 7, but it is a little choppy. Probably because of the assigned 512 meg of ram for running Windows 7.

Thanks for all of your ideas and help.