Your name isn't really Bill, is it?
your starting to get paranoid...
When I first read this thread, I couldn't help but shudder at the mention of "Oracle". Biggest *censored* in the history of databases. Not as big as companies actually using it, though. But I managed to calm down when I realized that the OP was actually asking about VirtualBox, which only recently became Oracle's, so will be a far less *censored*-ey piece of software, at least for a while.
I seem to be having trouble with Oracle's virtualbox. When i first used it, i thought creating the virtual windows will make it work straight away, but i have now found out you need an iso image.
Of course you do- it's a virtual machine- you can't take a blank machine and put it together and have an OS magically, you need to install it.
I've been trying to search for information on how to create an .iso or where i can get the Windows 7 image file but no luck at all.
Does anyone know where i can get the Windows 7 .iso image for virtualbox or how i can create one?
ST answered this quite well. make a ISO from your Windows 7 disk. There is no "ISO for virtualbox" it's a virtual machine, and acts just like a normal machine. If it needed a special ISO then it would sort of fail at emulating an average PC, wouldn't it? Just your normal Win7 disk would work.
BUT: there may be a caveat: to my understanding, running windows in a VM counts as running it on another machine. Therefore you would need two licenses to run Windows in a VM as well as on the host OS:
One final area that's come under a lot of scrutiny--and, as it turns out, misguided interpretations--regards virtualization. With Windows Vista, Microsoft is finally addressing virtualization in the EULA. And it goes something like this:
Any version of Windows Vista can host virtual machines (VMs), whether in Microsoft's Virtual PC solution or a rival product like VMWare Workstation. However, only two retail version of Windows Vista are licensed for use as a guest OS in a VM: Windows Vista Business and Ultimate. (A third--non-retail--Vista version, Vista Enterprise, has different licensing terms, which I'll address in a bit.)
Let that one sink in for a second. You cannot install Windows Vista Home Basic or Home Premium in a virtual machine, at least from a legal standpoint. (There is nothing technical preventing you from doing so, of course.) And on a related note, each retail copy of Vista you purchase is only licensable for one install. If you install a copy of Windows Vista in a virtual machine and then activate it, you cannot install the same copy of Vista on a physical machine and reactivate it (unless you take advantage of the transfer rights mentioned above, of course). One license equals one installation.
So why "restrict" users like that? Well, as it turns out, there's no massive conspiracy. Currently, the majority of Microsoft's virtualization users fall into exactly two groups: business customers and enthusiasts. Business customers will want Vista Business and enthusiasts will use Vista Ultimate. Simple. And though pundits might like to complain about this apparently arbitrary decision, the reality is that very, very few people can ever come up with a legitimate reason to run, say, Vista Home Basic in a VM. And those that want to, can, if they don't mind violating the Vista EULA and not receiving support.
Windows Vista Enterprise is a special case. With that version of Vista, which will be made available only to volume license customers, users will be able to install a single licensed copy of Vista on one physical PC and up to four VMs, simultaneously. Those four VMs, however, must all be installed on the same Vista Enterprise-based PC, and they must be used by the same user. "If customers need multiple virtual machines they should use Vista Enterprise," Microsoft's Scott Woodgate told me. "The intention is to be generous and enable whatever scenarios are customers may need." Sounds like a customer benefit to me.
I'm not sure how different it is with Win7, but I have no reason to doubt they have changed the "one license=one install" rule for virtualization.
