Those of us running Windows in a virtualised system, as I used to,
know of the problems updating to Win11 from Win10 if the host system
does not meed the hardware requirements. Apparently that issue has
gone away with the latest version of Virtualbox (7.0) which provides
the necessary support to any missing features in the host hardware!
Truth or dare - I've yet to try it out.

On 10/14/2022 6:01 AM, mechanic wrote:
> Those of us running Windows in a virtualised system, as I used to,
> know of the problems updating to Win11 from Win10 if the host system
> does not meed the hardware requirements. Apparently that issue has
> gone away with the latest version of Virtualbox (7.0) which provides
> the necessary support to any missing features in the host hardware!
> Truth or dare - I've yet to try it out.
>

I have two test cases for you:

1) Run it on Skylake + VBOX7. W11 installation attempt should fail.

2) Run it on Zen3 or Rocketlake + VBOX7. Should pass.

There are many details under the hood.

If you moved an existing Guest from (2) to (1), it would boot.

Every time that W11 boots, it has to carry out functional
tests for HVCI, whether there is MBEC, and a few more things.
The end result, is some subsystems and features are turned off,
when it detects a degradation/noncompliance. It has to do this,
because the W10 or W11 disk drives survive if moved from machine
to machine (can move a Zen3 disk to a Skylake and it boots).
The OS must adapt on the fly to this happening.

And W11 definitely knows it is a Guest OS. There is a utility
that dumps status flags, and one of the status flags says "Virtualized".
There are so many clues you're inside a VM, it's hard to guess
which one Microsoft used for this :-)

I agree with you -- it's very much Truth or Dare -- it's matrix test time.

Personally, I want to do the failure cases first. Like (1).

Paul

mechanic wrote:

> Those of us running Windows in a virtualised system, as I used to,
> know of the problems updating to Win11 from Win10 if the host system
> does not meed the hardware requirements. Apparently that issue has
> gone away with the latest version of Virtualbox (7.0) which provides
> the necessary support to any missing features in the host hardware!
> Truth or dare - I've yet to try it out.

Host machine: HP-something-or-other, Intel Core i5 4570, TPM 1.2. (Around 9
years old, I think.) Unmodified Windows 11 refused to install here, but 22H2
installed just now under VirtualBox without issue.

--
Everyone lost to the hero Gotham thinks it needs to deserve to have.

mechanic <mechanic@example.net> wrote:

> Those of us running Windows in a virtualised system, as I used to,
> know of the problems updating to Win11 from Win10 if the host system
> does not meed the hardware requirements. Apparently that issue has
> gone away with the latest version of Virtualbox (7.0) which provides
> the necessary support to any missing features in the host hardware!
> Truth or dare - I've yet to try it out.

The problem was Virtualbox was using its own hypervisor which conflicted
with the one already in Windows. Virtualbox had to reduce its
functionality for compatibility, but the result is a slow VM than
before. At one time, to use Virtualbox meant to uninstall HyperV; else,
you needed to upgrade Vbox to issue calls to HyperV instead of using its
own hypervisor. I think that was why you had to upgrade to Vbox 6, so
Microsoft's HyperV API got used.

https://borncity.com/win/2022/03/16/windows-11-kompatibilittsprobleme-mit-virtualbox-behoben/
which points to:
https://us.informatiweb.net/tutorials/it/virtualization/virtualbox-use-virtualbox-and-hyper-v-at-the-same-time.html
and some history on the conflict:
https://docs.oracle.com/en/virtualization/virtualbox/6.0/admin/hyperv-support.html
https://us.informatiweb.net/tutorials/it/virtualization/virtualbox-use-virtualbox-and-hyper-v-at-the-same-time.html

On Fri, 14 Oct 2022 13:01:58 -0400, Paul wrote:

> I have two test cases for you:
>
> 1) Run it on Skylake + VBOX7. W11 installation attempt should fail.

Well, running on a i7-6700 (which is Skylake?) this Virtualbox
version 7.0 installs windows 11 nicely! I *think* it was the
processor that was the stumbling block on the win10 update path.

Although this was not plain sailing, some fiddling necessary with
the hardware parameters on the install page for the Win11 VM before
it did complete the install. Just the uncertainty on my part I
think.

On 10/15/2022 9:59 AM, mechanic wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022 13:01:58 -0400, Paul wrote:
>
>> I have two test cases for you:
>>
>> 1) Run it on Skylake + VBOX7. W11 installation attempt should fail.
>
> Well, running on a i7-6700 (which is Skylake?) this Virtualbox
> version 7.0 installs windows 11 nicely! I *think* it was the
> processor that was the stumbling block on the win10 update path.
>
> Although this was not plain sailing, some fiddling necessary with
> the hardware parameters on the install page for the Win11 VM before
> it did complete the install. Just the uncertainty on my part I
> think.
>

On my test here, it appears VBOX7 uses passthru TPM, and you
don't have a TPM in the Guest environment, unless there is
one on the machine. This might also include fTPM which my
machine does not have either.

I used the Security Device dialog in Windows 10, to notice
that no TPM was being emulated. VMWare Workstation has a "SWTPM"
as a device inside the Guest, by comparison.

But this is unimportant, compared to the speed of VBOX 7.
It's still as broken as 6.1.34 . And that's with Windows 10
as the Host.

Connectix (or MSFT) VirtualPC, always had "close to the iron" speed.
Animations at startup, were buttery smooth. VirtualBox isn't like that.
Even the ping time from the Guest in VirtualBox is slow (something
with a normal ping time of 1msec takes 2msec. Something at 2msec
takes 4msec). It looks like a bit of a general slowdown for some reason.

Paul