>Hi Al,
>
>VirtualBox looks really promising but unfortunately you can't choose where the program installs. I don't have enough free space for everything on the C:\ drive. There is plenty of space on D: through G (some are external drives): but I can't get to them during the install!
>
>All I need to do is test a simple copy command, the upgrade to a launcher program. If I could bill a client for even half of the time I've wasted, I could buy a new PC with Windows 7 installed--not that I have any desire to own a Windows 7 after these past 4 weeks!
>
>Update: I found remnants of a Virtual PC 2007 install. After removing those files and directories, I was able to install Virtual Box and direct the virtual hard disk to D:\. Unfortunately, the OS install proceeded exactly as before: the process just hangs on "Expanding files". It appears that it is not possible to install Windows 7 as the guest OS when Windows XP is the host. I'm giving up!

If you're just doing one simple thing, ask someone with a Win7 box to test it for you.

A few general pointers about VirtualBox and virtualization in general:

- there is good information on supported host and guest OSs in the user manual, available at http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads . Loading a Win7 guest on an XP host is supported.

- make sure you're trying to install a 32-bit Windows 7 guest OS rather than 64-bit. While you can install a 64-bit guest OS on a 32-bit host with VirtualBox, it requires a 64-bit CPU with hardware virtualization support, which I'm guessing you don't have

- you may need to enable virtualization support in your computer's BIOS. This feature, if available with your CPU and motherboard, is often, if not usually, disabled by default

- are you absolutely positive you've specified the VHD file to be where there's lots of free space?

- are you desperately low on free disk space on C:? If so, and you have a fragmented swap file and not much room for other temporary files, that's going to cause lots of problems in the Windows host, and therefore in any guest VMs as well. I consider less than 10% free dangerous, less than 5% free desperate.

- how much RAM is in use on the host after you open VirtualBox, but before you start the VM? If it's already using close to 2GB that's not going to help. Allocating 1GB for a Win7 guest is adequate as long as it's not doing a lot of stuff.

Virtualization works best with a current 64-bit CPU and at least 6, if not 8 or more GB RAM, and tons of free disk space.

It's too bad you've had a bad experience, that's probably left a bad taste in your mouth about virtualization. With adequate hardware, it's a godsend for testing; when you get it working you'll wonder how you lived without it. Hardware is cheap; get a 64-bit CPU and mobo, lots of RAM and disk, load up Win7 64-bit as a host and you're well set for virtualization.