Getting Virtualbox to work on Windows 8.1

Quick tip for those of you who want to try install Virtualbox on Windows 8.1 – use one of the older versions  -  VirtualBox-4.3.12-93733-Win.exe  worked for me (download locationDownload Virtualbox Old builds). More recent versions seem to crash when you try to start a virtual image – see screenshot below.

If you are already using Hyper-V you will also need to create a dual boot since Virtualbox is not compatible with Hyper-V. You can do this using the commands listed below from an administrative command prompt (As outlined in this blog post from Scot Hanselman – Switch easily between VirtualBox and Hyper_V with a BCDEdit boot entry in Windows  8.1 )

C:\>bcdedit /copy {current} /d "No Hyper-V" 
The entry was successfully copied to {ff-23-113-824e-5c5144ea}. 

C:\>bcdedit /set {ff-23-113-824e-5c5144ea} hypervisorlaunchtype off 
The operation completed successfully.

When booting you will be provided with an option to boot with Hyper-V support or without Hyper-V support.

Tags van Technorati: virtualbox,oracle,microsoft,windows81