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New Well that's interesting. OS X really doesn't like 15 MB free
I installed the latest Virtual Box on this MacMini Server (4 GB RAM) this morning, and installed an OEM XP Pro+SP3. The only changes I made from the defaults were to give the Video 64 MB of RAM for 2D acceleration, and increased the VM RAM to 2 GB. I figured, hey, why not. I'm going to be increasing the RAM to 8 GB soon, so ...

(One gotcha I never would have figured out without Google. I have a wired Apple keyboard. F8 starts iTunes. You have to hit F8 to accept MS's license. There's a little "fn" key next to the Home key on the keyboard that makes the function keys act like PC function keys. That got me over the hump.)

Well, the install went Ok, but I had to leave for work before the XP install finished.

OS X was very unhappy. The screen saver would try to come on, but there was such an overcommitment of RAM that it would take 5 minutes to respond to the mouse or keyboard. Firefox 4 was giving the spinning beachball.

This PM I finished the XP install and let it run. I activated it. Even after the install finished, FF4 was unhappy. I had to kill the VB session even after exiting XP.

iStat said that only 15 MB of RAM was free, so no wonder it was unhappy.

So, I dropped the VM size back to 512 MB (I think the recommended default was 128 MB or something). XP hasn't complained about needing to be reactivated (not enough points yet). FF is still very unhappy when the VB session starts up, but it works (no beachball). With XP doing nothing, Thunderbird running, and FF4 running with 78 tabs, I've got 829 MB free and things are snappy enough.

(Turning off the eye candy in XP is something I always do.)

I'll have to play around some more, but so far so good. I haven't tried transferring the VM file to another PC/Mac yet - don't know how soon that will bubble up the queue...

Thanks, everyone.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Preferences -> Keyboard lets you change that
There's a checkbox that turns the function keys back into standard function keys. You then hit fn to trigger the special features like iTunes control.
New Ah, nice. Thanks.
     OEM WinXP+ in a VM on OSX - Re/Activation necessary? - (Another Scott) - (10)
         FYI... - (folkert) - (1)
             Thanks. I'll have to try XPHome and see how it goes. -NT - (Another Scott)
         It is points based - (scoenye) - (4)
             Great information. Thanks a bunch. -NT - (Another Scott)
             They also want a license for each VM install... - (Another Scott) - (2)
                 My Version of WinXP - (folkert) - (1)
                     Excellent. Thanks. -NT - (Another Scott)
         Well that's interesting. OS X really doesn't like 15 MB free - (Another Scott) - (2)
             Preferences -> Keyboard lets you change that - (SpiceWare) - (1)
                 Ah, nice. Thanks. -NT - (Another Scott)

Certainly, as long as they don't require any treatment.
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