Now that you have successfully installed VirtualBox, you will want to install Windows, so that you can run your

essential Windows software.  To begin, open VirtualBox, and click the New button.  The Create New Virtual

Machine wizard will open, and guide you through the process.  Below are a series of images showing the settings

to choose in the Setup wizard to create your virtual machine, and the settings made by clicking the Settings tab,

prior to installing Windows, or another OS. 

 

 

 

Click Next.  Enter a suitable name for your new virtual machine, and select an Operating System Type.

 

 

Click Next.  Enter a Base Memory Size.  A rule of thumb here, is to use half of the memory installed on

your system.  The more memory you allocate, the faster your VM will run.

 

 

Click Next.  Create a Hard Disk Image for your VM to use. 

 

 

Click New to launch the Create New Virtual Disk wizard.

 

 

Click Next.  Select the type of virtual disk you want to create.  The fixed size image runs faster,

and is generally the best choice, although it takes up more space on your hard drive initially.

 

 

Enter a name for your Image File in the Image File Name field.  By clicking the File Folder icon to the right of the

name field, you can select the drive or partition on which the disk image will be created.  The default setting will place

it in your Home directory.  Use the slider to set the size of your virtual disk.  Five to ten gigabytes is generally adequate,

unless you are planning to install a lot of very large software packages.  For the most part, you will be saving your work

to a native Xandros drive, so you do not need to allocate space for saving your files on your virtual drive.

 

 

Click Next. 

 

 

Click Finish. 

 

 

Click Finish.  Congratulations!  Your new virtual machine has been successfully created!  In the main VirtualBox window,

click the Settings icon in the toolbar.  

 

 

The Settings window will open.   Look over the settings shown on the Basic tab, under the General heading.

 

 

Click the Advanced tab.  Under Boot Order, select CD/DVD-ROM, to enable booting from your Windows install disk.  I recomend

un-checking the Enable ACPI and Enable IO APIC boxes.  By clicking the File Folder icon to the right of the Snapshot Folder

field, you can set drive or partition where your System Snapshots will be stored.  The default setting should be fine.

 

 

In the left pane, click Hard Disks.  The default here will work fine as well.  These settings can be changed later if needed.

 

 

In the left pane, click Floppy.  If you have a floppy drive installed on your system, and want it to be accessible to the Virtual

Machine, check the box next to Mount Floppy Drive.  In the unlikely event that you have more than one floppy drive, you

can select the one to mount from the Host Floppy Drive pull-down gadget.  You can also choose to mount a Floppy Disk I

mage as a drive.  This can be helpful on some Windows installations, if you do not have a floppy drive on your system.

 

 

In the left pane, click CD/DVD-ROM.  Check the box next to Mount CD/DVD Drive.  Put a dot in the circle next to Host

CD/DVD Drive, and select the cd/dvd drive to use from the pull-down gadget, or if you are planning to install from an ISO

image, tick the circle next to ISO Image File.

 

 

In the left pane, click Audio.  Check the box next to Enable Audio.  In the Host AudioDriver pull-down gadget, select the

appropriate driver.  The Alsa driver worked for me.  Your mileage may vary.

 

 

In the left pane, select Network.  Unless you are a networking wiz, and know exactly what you are doing, leave the default

settings alone.

 

 

In the left pane, click USB.  Check the box next to Enable USB Controller. 

 

 

 

In the left pane, click  Remote Display.  Here again, unless you know exactly what you are doing, leave the default settings alone.

 

 

 

Click the OK button, to exit the Settings window.

 

 

That's it!  Your Virtual Machine has been created, your settings are set.  You are ready to install Windows.  Insert your

Windows install CD into your CD/DVD drive, and click Start in the Virtual Box toolbar.  A new window will open, and the

Windows Installation Wizard will start, guiding you through the install process.  From this point on, the process should

be identical to installing Windows on a "real" computer.  If you have installed Windows in the past, you should have no

problems this time.  Please note, however that if you are installing from an upgrade version disk, you will need to to also

have the installation disk from an earlier Windows version on hand, and will have to insert it when prompted, to verify that

you are qualified to use the upgrade version.  You may find that the eject button on your CD/DVD drive is disabled, and you

are unble to eject your installation disk in order to insert the older version disk.  If this happens, open Xandros File Manager,

and scroll down to your CD/DVD drive, in the left pane.  Right-click on it, and select Eject Disk.  You will have to do this again

when you are prompted to reinsert the installation disk, to resume installing.

 

Note:  Once you have Windows installed, you will want to setup folder sharing between your Xandros Host and Windows Guest. 

To learn how, see this article:  How to share folders between Host and Guest machines on VMs

 

Happy computing!   papabearak