Arch Linux

krogen

Member

Registered: 2008-02-11

Posts: 13

Hardware under Windows virtual machine

Hello,

I just installed VirtualBox (bin from VirtualBox's website) on my Arch. I installed Windows XP Pro on top of it. The installation went well without any problems and the vm booted into Windows. Once in Windows, I tried to install drivers for my sound card (Razer Barracuda AC-1) and graphics card (NVIDIA 8800GT) but was unable to do it. Both of the installers can't find the hardware. So I tried looking up if the graphics card and video card existed under device manager in my computer. They did. The sound card is called "base system device" and the video card "video controller (vga compatible)". I tried selecting drivers for both pieces of hardware manually (that is, r-click -> update driver), but got an error message, "The specified location does not contain information about your hardware". Any help?

Thanks.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Hardware under Windows virtual machine

IIRC the virtualized machine isn't going to use drivers for your standard hardware. It's going to require drivers for the virtualized hardware. This is most likely going to be standard across most client OSes. That said, my experience is only with QEMU so I may be wrong with VB.

jbromley

Member

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 268

Re: Hardware under Windows virtual machine

iBertus is correct. You get virtualized hardware, not the actual hardware in your machine.

The virtualized video card is a standard VESA card with 8 Mb, though with the VirtualBox guest additions you can get higher resolutions than VESA will provide. Note that you will not get hardware acceleration. This is one reason I may have to bite the bullet and install a non-virtualized Windows -- I do OpenGL graphics and the performance is not good in OpenBox.

The sound card is an Intel ICH AC'97. Again, if you wanted to use the full capabilities of your sound card and they go beyond what the Intel card provides, you are probably out of luck.

There are also emulated network adapters and USB controllers (at least in the proprietary version.)

Regards,
j

krogen

Member

Registered: 2008-02-11

Posts: 13

Re: Hardware under Windows virtual machine

Thanks for answering my question. Looks like I should have done a little bit more research before jumping into vm.