How to install Windows Server 2012 R2 on VirtualBox

I was thinking that if I can install Windows Server 2012 R2 on my Virtualbox will be cool. And it is, now I have my Windows Server 2012 R2 up and running on my VirtualBox 4.2.28 on Windows 7 host. Installing Windows Server on Virtualbox is pretty much the same with installing Windows 7 or Windows 8 on Virtualbox. But, Since Windows server is different from Windows 7, we need to adjust the guest machine so the server can run.

First, we create a new virtual machine as usual. Make sure you use 64 bit version on the virtual machine settings as follow

windows server on virtualbox 1

Next, add RAM to the new virtual machine. I suggest you to assign more RAM to the virtual machine. 4 GB of RAM is good to go.

windows server on virtualbox 2

Once the new virtual machine created, we need to adjust some settings such as Enable PAE/NX feature if your host processor support it. Also, adding more processor is a good way to get better performance.

windows server on virtualbox 4

OK, now we are ready to boot the new Windows Server virtual machine.

But ooops, in most cases, you will see the following error displayed on your Virtual machine display. Error code 0x000000C4 etc.

windows server on virtualbox error

Don’t worry, we can fix this. Turn Off the VM and Open command prompt from Start | Run and type cmd. On the command prompt, type the following command

cd C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox

And then execute this command

VBoxManage.exe setextradata “Windows Server 2012” VBoxInternal/CPUM/CMPXCHG16B 1

Don’t forget to change “Windows Server 2012” with your VM name. If your VM name does not use space, you don’t have to type quotes before and after it.

Now start the VM and this problem should fixed and you can boot Windows Server and install it as usual

install windows server on virtualbox

Admin

One Comment

  1. Hi, thanks for this, first time intlislang CentOS (always been Ubuntu up til now, wanted to try something else). Ran into this problem. installed 3.6 as above via network. 30Mb line. Not too slow at all

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