VirtualBox – Fix Fedora Live CD Boot Failure

fedoraiso-imagelinuxvirtualboxwindows 7

Background: I was recently trying to install Fedora 18 into Virtualbox. The version of virtualbox is listed as: 4.2.14.0. My host system is 64 bit Windows 7 home premium. My processor (Intel Pentium B940) will only host 32 bit vm Operating Systems. The Fedora release I downloaded and tried to install is: Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso

Virtual box can see (and read?) the live CD .iso. I get this far:

LoadScreen

but then it hangs never loading the OS:

HangScreen

I'm pretty sure that I have the storage/load settings correct:
StorageSettings

Here are the Network settings:

Network

Here are the System settings:

enter image description here

I was able to successfully load Fedora 15 from a DVD .iso (Fedora-15-i386-DVD.iso).
I have Win7 (en_windows_7_professional_with_sp1_x86_dvd_u_677056.iso) loaded in a virtual machine

Best Answer

You're processor does support 64-bit OS's natively (CPU specs).

My understanding is that you're saying you are running Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit.

The ISO name "Fedora-17-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso" points out that the Fedora version is 64-bit (x86_64).

You can't run a 64-bit VirtualBox guest on a 32-bit host OS unless you processor supports both 64-bit instructions (which yours does) and hardware virtualization (which yours does not). Related info from VirtualBox

So, either run a 32-bit (i386) of Fedora in the VM, or replace your host OS (Windows) version with a 64-bit version, or upgrade your CPU to one that supports both 64-bit and hardware virtualization.

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