James Bannan24 December 2008, 12:12 AM
How to run Windows Vista inside Mac OS X, without paying for VMware or Parallels. Our step-by-step tutorial will give you all the information you need!
Page 4 - Step 4 - Install Vista
To install Vista from the media, you'll need to attach the physical optical drive to the VM so that the VM can read from the DVD.
To do this, highlight the Vista VM within VirtualBox and in the right-hand window click on "CD/DVD-ROM".
Another window opens up - tick the checkbox next to "Mount CD/DVD-ROM" and make sure that "Host CD/DVD Drive" is selected, then click OK.
Make sure that the Vista DVD is in the drive and start the VM by clicking on the Start button. The VM will read from the optical drive and load the Vista DVD.
Highlight the Windows Vista VM then click Start. The system will start up and, in the absence of an operating system, will boot from the DVD.
To interact with a VM, you have to click into the window which contains the running instance. Doing this will "capture" the keyboard and mouse. You won't be able to interact with the Mac desktop, but you will be able to interact with the VM. To escape back to the Mac desktop click the Host key. For VirtualBox on OS X, the Host key is mapped to the Left Command button.
This is the default behaviour on all VirtualBox VMs, but you can enable seamless integration by installing guest addition tools, which we'll do once Vista has been installed.
When the Windows graphical interface loads, choose your language, time and currency format and keyboard layout and click Next.
Click "Install Now". Enter the product key or leave the field blank - this will install Vista in trial mode.
If applicable, choose the version of Vista you wish to install, tick "I have selected the edition of Windows that I purchased" and click Next.
Accept the Microsoft license terms and click Next.
Choose a Custom installation. On the "Where do you want to install Windows?" screen, select the virtual disk and click Next.
Vista will now install.
Once the installation is completed Vista will reboot. Type in your username and password details and click Next.
Then type in a computer name and click Next. Choose the appropriate automatic update settings for your environment, then set the correct clock and time zone information and click Next.
And that's it - Vista is installed.